Here are some pictures from my half allotment plot I’m growing on. This is a very diverse maize crop which is a mix of land races collected from many different countries. I snuck in a little wheat, barley and einkorn in there too!
The wheat is an old heritage variety which originated in Turkey - I planted it very late and it looks like it’s doing very well. I plan to add this to my wider wheat population next year (although I need to find a larger growing space!)
The Einkorn is a similar story - I will add it to my Emmer/Spelt population, or maybe lump it all together into a multi species population as I’m scaling.
The barley is a landrace from Scotland called Bere barely. I want to develop this over time and include a lot more diversity in the future.
I might edit later and talk more about the individual photos but it’s difficult to see which one’s which and I’m lazy. My camera is also very poor so you must forgive me for the quality!
Just harvested 2 days ago. Was on the fence about when to harvest but I was losing cobs due to pest pressure (mice or rabbits) and also weather pressure. We have more damp and wet winters now in the UK so the longer I leave it now the more mold and rot I will have to deal with.
Here’s a cob which I initially thought I would discard dispite how beautiful it seems, due it being mouldy and germinating due to dampness. I thought that I should keep it for seed as it probably has ripened earlier than other cobs I have, so has succumbed to damp pressure. But if I select for earlier ripening cobs I’ll avoid dealing with so much damp pressure anyway.
I was going to harvest my patch on stages but ended up harvesting everything in one go. So hopefully I’ll be encouraging people earlier ripening times now. (I got a fair few baby cobs as vegetables to enjoy too)
@Hugo it’s a flour or flint corn population grown on about 100square foot. I want to scale to a much larger plot next year and use it to make flour and maybe some beer too.
It’s common for farmers to grow densely planted feed corn for cattle. But otherwise it’s not really grown here except for the hobbyist growing yellow sweetcorn.
Here farmers seal it, my mate harvested it all because the bore were getting a large proportion of it. I was surprised it wasn’t ripe with mature corn stalks and stuff. He said the cattle do not care, they eat the stalks and leaves. I fit’s the same for UK cattle, they probably harvest before rot arrives, hence not caring for a rot resistant variety.
Hmm interesting, I wonder if it’s the same story here too. I imagine it may be so long as storage or transport isn’t an issue.
I had a few cobs with mould and borers which I did my best to clean off (probably around 2% loss to pest pressure). The majority was ripe or nearly ripe and a little green. I also got a bunch of baby cobs I harvested to eat. I think selecting for early ripening is more valuable here than resistance as if it’s left on the stalks to ripen longer you’re risking it being left out in rain showers and increased pest pressure. It would be good to incorporate a bit of resistance maybe but for now I’ll select for earlyness.
My biggest issue is drying, but that could be sorted by a barn to hang the cobs in. Although I can see this being a bigger issue and more expensive for larger operations - ideally you wouldn’t have to machine dry as it’s expensive and energy intensive. So I will have to explore options for this going forward.
