Greenstorm
Oh, I love this idea of a pollen patch! That’s useful for me in thinking about crossing gaspe, which is so short-season it’s hard to get the timing right to cross with other corns.
I’ve noticed a lot of the squash seeds I’ve been hunting down have been treated. It really drives me towards smaller suppliers and away from hybrids; I guess I’ve lived in my little hippie corner of the world so long I didn’t realize so much stuff was still treated.
Corn is fun! I look forward to pictures of seeds and plants! It really is one of the prettiest to work with.
Megan G
This is interesting - I’m working on corn this year as well. I have a few popcorn, but many flour, dent, and sweet corn types. I also have seed for Zea diperennis and Teosinte to see how they fair in northern Corn Belt country. To my understanding, flour types don’t work so well in my climate, but dent and flints are the way to go. I’m have lower expectations of a huge harvest this year due to my sandy soil and fertility, or lack thereof.
Now, this may be ego-tistical, but I did snag some ‘Megnificent’ popcorn seeds from North Circle Seeds, because (1) local regional company with local adaptation seed, and (2) my name is Megan and I couldn’t help getting a popcorn with Meg in it. It’s also multi-colored and I’m looking forward to this variety being the start of my popcorn.
I have a variety of other corns as well. I’m really excited to plant them this year. I have planted corn my first year gardening and it was a foot high and didn’t yield a single ear. Out of disappointment, I hadn’t planted corn since. This will be my first year re-introducing corn into the garden with more wisdom than in years past.
Mark, I may steal your idea for a pollen patch. That’s a wonderful idea and clever, too! I’m surrounded by corn country and cross-pollination from GMO types is a concern for me. To have pollen on standby is a smart idea. I also will not be saving seed from the outer layer(s) of the block.
I also enjoy that your corn is shorter maturity. I’m in the 100-110 day corn range. Usually we’d be planting corn soon, but the weather here has been too cold.
I’m excited to see your corn project! I feel the same way about taking on more projects. I said the same thing yesterday. There are worse hobbies. At least this hobby you can eat! (:
Mark Reed
@Megan G
where are you located? Here in SE IN zea diperennis grows into giant clumps, reminds me of Johnson grass but it does not flower. I’ve never planted pure annual teosinte but the F1 of it and zea mays grew very well. I kept its influence in my field corn landrace because I like the multi tillers and multi ears.
*note - when I grow a pollen patch, I time it to flower along with the mother plants. It’s very easy to collect pollen and immediately dump it on the silks of another plant but my attempts to save corn pollen in the fridge or freezer failed completely.
Greenstorm
@Mark R Out of curiosity, is there an easy way to time corn other than grow it a couple years to know when it pollinates?
Mark R
Growing and observing it is the best way I reckon but you can also go by the days to maturity description, (DTM).
Actual maturity seems to me is determined by accumulated heat units but for timing the DTM on a seed packet can give you a clue. For example, DTM for the Early Pink in my list above is 90 days. All others are 95 to 100 days. A range of 90 to 100 days is probably close enough for the whole project but to be safe I planted some more Early Pink a few days later.
I’m all about fast maturity in all my crops so the Early Pink is one I definitely want as a mother. I don’t know how DTM is inherited, I suspect it is probably a combination of genes rather than a single one.
I also know that some traits are cytoplasmic, for example cytoplasmic male sterility. Cytoplasm is inherited from the mother and all of that mother’s offspring will have it. Male sterility isn’t an issue with corn but there are most likely other cytoplasmic traits in pretty much any plant, just a guess on my part. That’s why when something has a trait that I want to make sure is carried to the next generation, I make sure to plant seeds from that maternal line.
In my flint corn where I used Zapalote Chico for the worm resistance I have tracked plants from that maternal line through the duration of the project. I don’t know that there is anything cytoplasmic about the worm resistance, but just in case. Ultimately even years from now when my flint corn has little obvious resemblance to Zapalote Chico its maternal line will still trace back to it.
In my popcorn, assuming things go well the maternal lines will track back to the Early Pink at 90 DTM and maybe the Firecracker at 95 DTM.
Megan G
I’m located in south central Wisconsin, in the Central Sands.
I also obtained hybrids of Teosinte and a MN grown corn, so I’m excited for that.
I also am shooting for multiple tillers - Peace Seedlings offers some multi-tiller corn they coined “bush corn”. I have two of those I think.
That’s good to know for Zea diperennis. I imagined it would be a tough effect due to such a substantial climate difference, but worth a shot! Your corn landrace sounds very interesting to me. How long have you worked on your field corn project?
Greenstorm
@Megan Grinwald
I found my lavender parching corn was a heavy tillering corn; would love to see pictures of your “bush” corns! I keep looking at those peace seedlings descriptions but don’t have a great sense of how many tillers they send out or how concurrent the ear formation is.
Megan G
@Erin DeShong
Color me intrigued. I’m getting to be quite anxious to start planting corn. My whole area has been delayed in corn planting this year due to La Nina’s weather effect on the Midwest region. On average, we’re down about 27% of fields planted last I heard.
I’m hoping to be able to get corn in the ground before I head out to Oregon in the beginning of June.
I don’t mind a good heavy tillering corn! I look forward to photographing the corn’s evolution. I don’t remember if I said it before in the past or not, but I haven’t had great success with corn in the past, so that’s why I have so many varieties this year. Something’s got to work for me! I’ll keep you posted on the corn in particular. Corn seems to be the crop of my year. Corn 2022.
I’m very interested in your super-short-season corn you are working on. I’d like to see its progress, too!
I’m very interested in Mark’s corn as well.
@Mark Reed
you’re very knowledgeable and it blows me away.
Greenstorm
@Megan G Have you managed to get your corn in the ground yet? If you have a chance to post what you’re planting in the projects space I’d love to follow along, even if all you start with is a list of varieties and a picture of some of those seeds. Apparently I just want to look at corn seeds all day lately.
Mark R
I guess close to ten years ago I started with a sweet corn landrace but gave it up for several reasons. Then I went to flour corn and mostly I ditched it too because I came to believe that a flint corn is probably more adapted to my climate. So about four years ago I started adding and selecting for flint. Carol Deppe’s Cascade flints are in there, an old NE heirloom called Bronze Beauty and some others. I need resistance to ear worms, so a Mexican landrace called Zapalote Chico is included.
Remnants of the sweet and flour projects are in there too for particular traits like fast maturity or drought tolerance and the teosinte as well. I want to call it Reed’s Ohio Valley Flint but got a few more seasons of selection before it is really a true flint.
Greenstorm
How many corn projects are you growing this year? Popcorn, your flint corn project…?
How are you isolating in your space, or not really worrying about that?
Mark R
Primarily I’ll have just the two, flint and pop but the flint will consist of a number of plantings. I’m not worried about cross contamination; I doubt I’ll see much of it anyway as the treated popcorn seed isn’t allowed in the garden. It will be grown about a hundred feet away in a corner of the yard. In my experience a hundred feet is enough to prevent most crossing. Plus, the popcorn supposedly won’t accept other pollen and popcorn is very hard flint so if a stray pollen from it gets to the other, I’m fine with that.
A patch already planted, is the ancestors of the flint project. It has a number of pure varieties and a bunch of earlier generation crosses; I want to increase and freshen my seed supply of that. I’m just going to leave that to its own devices and hope to find several ears that meet most of the flint project selection criteria.
Soon I’ll also plant a patch from just the 25 selected ears from last year that have all or most of the desired traits. I’ll plant another patch of it later as well, so its maturity coincides arrival of the worms, to test for resistance. And I’ll probably plant more patches later, in spots following short season beans or cowpeas.
I’m looking forward to being officially being out of the business of keeping track of variety names, keeping stocks of pure ancestral varieties, detasseling, hand pollinating and all that kind of stuff. Although all of that starts over in the new popcorn project but that is mostly just for fun, and it won’t be as intensive there.
Greenstorm
Oh, that’s super interesting! Are you doing a plot of all ancestors, or just of some selected ones? How often have you folded the ancestors back in? I re-watched the video the other day and was impressed by your completeness in capturing the genes of your earworm-resistant parent, it sounds like you’re careful to capture a lot of everything! Is that teosinte cross also in your ancestors patch this year?
Mark R
Yes, the teosinte in in there, it is one of four that I planted in specific marked sections of the rows. The others are:
*Aunt Mary’s sweet corn, an heirloom supposedly from northern Ohio. It is a very strong grower in my climate, has 12 or less rows of large kernels, it’s all white and aside from being technically sweet has very flinty endosperm.
*Bronze Beauty Flint, a very old heirloom from the Northeast US into Canada. Long slender ears with thin cobs helps in quick dry down. White endosperm, varied pericarp color.
*And of course, the Zapalote Chico. Certainly not a flint but the source of the worm resistance. Short fat ears, sometimes with less that 14 rows of large kernels.
And then everything else, various other flint, flour and sweet types already crossed up and selected in prior years for my preferred traits. Unless something great shows up I’ll only be saving seed from the first four.
Greenstorm
@Ray South This is where Mark talks about his brilliant pollen patch idea.
Ray S
Thank you Erin. Just read the thread. It’s given me some ideas to use when my corn season starts in November/December.
Greenstorm
@Ray South
Very interested to see your corn projects; I know you said in a comment on squash you had a summer very similar to mine here. Hope you post about it when ready!