It is sprouting on the cob. Looks like some of the seeds got too wet. Any reason to keep this? I can think of a couple, but just as many against.
It might be drought tolerant. It might be wet tolerant. And it certainly thrived in clay soil.
Someone in a warmer area might like a corn that sprouts so easily.
I don’t live in a place where 2 corn crops per year is feasible. Commercial farmers do it routinely, but they’re also growing gmo corn with pesticides and fertilizers.
Some people soak their corn to sprout and ferment it to make it more digestible as animal feed. Readiness to sprout like that could indicate a good corn for that, but not for storage imo. Mine go straight to the animals.
It depends. Do you need them for diversity? Since you are even asking it seems that you don’t have enough plants that produced. Personally I don’t think you need to discard everything that isn’t prime quality, but rather start from the bottom. To me most important selection is those that don’t even get to produce due to environment or produce less than some of the better. Advantage of saving from those corn seeds is that corn is often crosspollinated so what you have are likely to be crosses and that trait less prominent. It has also already pollinated others so trait is likely spread already. At the same time other genes have spread so you don’t need that for genetic diversity. You can also plant those seeds separately and detassel them so you can see how they perform before deciding if they are worth it. Seeds from them would be mandatory crosses so the trait would be diluted.
I planted those that have already sprouted in the greenhouse. We’ll see. I might just get them to milk stage, or nothing. Might as well experiment, since I have the seeds.
I had one ear do that, too. It was on a tiller and had been blown over in the wind. I assumed that a combo of our odd summer (not as much heat) and too much moisture was the culprit, and tossed the whole ear into the compost.
