Sooo my sweet corn is starting to tassel which is very exciting but it led me to the question of how to save good viable corn seed. Is there a percentage of how many cobs you dry per how many plants you grew? For example: for every 50 plants, save 5 cobs? If one corn plant has two ears, do I harvest one to eat and let the other one dry down for the rest of summer, or can I take part of that cob for eating and save the partial cob for seedsaving? Depending on how many cobs I need to keep for seed, it seems like I’d be losing out a good amount of harvestable tasty corn! But I suppose if the seeds stay viable for a few years I may only save seed every other year or something like that…
How does everyone save seed from sweet corn specifically? How many cobs do you save? Flour or popcorn is pretty straight forward since you let the whole plant dry down before harvesting but with the sweet corn I’d like to keep the plant intact for as long as possible for better seed development.
My experience is that even if viability is achieved quite early, the seed will be more vigorous the more time they have to ripen. Even if they germinate fairly good, only smaller percentage seems to emerge and those take longer than those that have had more time to mature. Later they regain the vigour (what genes allow), but it’s not very good for comparing or you get worse impression than warented for seeds that you might have thought came from special plants. I would let them ripen as long as the weather isn’t too wet too long at the later stage of drying so around month from silking.
I agree, the longer it can stay on the stalk to dry down the better. A prematurely dried seed may technically be viable, but the sprout will be less robust, and stored seed will have shorter shelf life.
That depends on how many total you grew and their genetic makeup. In one of her books Carol Deppe writes that corn is one of the crops that suffers most from genetic depression (inbreeding) and the effects of it can be seen in just a couple of seasons. If you are growing an heirloom, then fifty plants aren’t enough regardless of what you do. On the flip side corn is in my opinion probably one of the best and easiest to apply the Lofthouse landrace thing. In fact, it may be the only one a home small home gardener can do it with. It is very easy let multiple varieties mix themselves and very easy to purposely control the crosses if you want to. Get as many kinds as you can and plant them intermixed so that most of your seed is hybrid and in following years you can get by with less that the 200 recommended plants needed to preserve an heirloom and you can get by with saving seed from just your favorites.
I think that if a plant has more than one cob, it’s fine to eat one and save another.
Joseph Lofthouse reports that he opens a cob to taste and leaves the rest to dry for seed. In my climate if you open the husk on an ear of corn at eating stage and leave the rest you end up with a husk full of bug poop and mold so that might be a function of humidity and bug population.
My sweet corn is very mixed up and I grow small patches but most all of it produces at least two cobs per stalk so I’m able to evaluate individual plants by eating one. Even though it is mixed up I still like to save seed from at least twenty plants and I keep seed going back three or four years to plant with the new seed. Multiple generations intermixing each year, what Alan Kalupler called a grex.
Sweet corn is harder than flour, flint or pop because you want to have something to eat and that means you have less seed to select from, but you can do it. The landrace thing works well for corn.
I grow about 40 plants in an intentionally mixed population. I’ve been adding about 10% unrelated (commercial or traded) seed each year as extra insurance against inbreeding.
Especially in the early years of landracing (when there were quite a few duds), I routinely cut off the top 2/3 of the cob to eat, then tied a string around the husk to close it up to keep the worms out. In my climate, I’ve found that I have far less worm pressure on the first planting than the second, so I only save seed from the first. (Apologies to everyone who barely has enough season for one crop.)
This year, I saved 5 whole ears for seed. I was planning 4, but I discovered a past-prime ear that had been missed. I tie a ribbon around ears for saving so I know not to pick them. I will split the seed 3 ways: next year’s seed, return to Going to Seed, and contribution to the local seed library.
Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who answered the questions! This will be our first time saving seed from sweet corn and we’ve only grown sweet corn ourselves a couple times so I had a lot of the same questions. About half of what we planted was GTS and the GTS seed is definitely outperforming all our others! It’s fun to see!
My mistake for not mentioning that I am starting out with a good mix of sweet corn, not just one variety. I had two or three different seed packets plus the Canadian GTS sweet corn mix, so I’m pretty sure I should have a good amount of cross pollination going on..
I haven’t counted how many stalks there are but I’m gonna guess at least 50. I appreciate you sharing how many cobs you keep for seed, gives me a good idea of what I should aim for. And also making sure to keep some aside each year to throw in with upcoming seasons.. smart indeed
I do have a fairly humid environment and it has been an unusually rainy summer when normally we wouldn’t have any during these months, so perhaps I’ll try opening up a couple cobs to taste and re-tie for seed saving and keep some untouched just to err on the safe side!
Haha to be able to grow two crops of corn sounds like a dream to me! I did stagger my grain and sweet by a month but I just have the one season to work with.
Thank you for sharing how many cobs you save for seed from the amount you have planted. Did you always save around 4-5 or did you gradually decrease the cobs you needed to save as your corn crop diversified?
I too want to make sure to save enough seed to donate to GTS, hopefully trade with others, and I would love to donate to a local seed library.. if it wasn’t a 2 hr drive into the hectic city. Can’t bring myself to venture out that way, though I’d love to rummage through some different seed varieties and share my own supply. Really nice of you to contribute that way and I’m glad you have a local library you have access to!
The first few years (between lack of adaptation and lack of skills), I only got maybe 10 decently sized and filled cobs total. I saved the bottom couple inches of everything good. There has been some editing over the years by little girls choosing to plant the purple seeds.
Well done on the consistent progress then! The last comment made me smile, makes me think of my little girl.. I can see her doing that with purple corn seeds! They look like pretty little gems haha
If you continue with you corn you might eventually end up with something you like and that does well for you. At that point and perhaps even before you might find that introducing pollen of completely unknown nature is a bad idea.
For example, I have a specific requirement for days to maturity and mine is in the acceptable range, I don’t want to screw that up. I also would not want to risk adding in something that might result in ears that overshoot the husk, or plants terribly prone to corn smut, that doesn’t taste good or a number of other things. If I do add something completely new, I get it from a seed company I trust based on the variety description but even then, I don’t just turn it loose in my patch. I plant it separately, watch it closely and detassel it at the first sign of something I don’t like.
Ooh that is a good reminder, I’ll definitely make sure to keep that in mind!
I’ll certainly have to tweak the timing of corn maturity. I’d like to alternate growing both grain&sweet or grain&popcorn every year, so I gotta make sure the tasseling doesn’t overlap… Of which it is currently doing a little bit right now. I planted a month apart but I suppose there was bound to be overlap since I had such a wide mix of varieties going on. I know I could bag the silks and self pollinate but I ain’t got time for that. Perhaps I should have only planted one or the other until I stabilized the tassel timing but alas, I didn’t think that far! Lessons learned haha.
Wise of you to grow new seed separately to observe and analyze before incorporating it into your mix. I’ll remember that if or when I decide to try something new!
Can’t bring myself to venture out that way, though I’d love to rummage through some different seed varieties and share my own supply. Really nice of you to contribute that way and I’m glad you have a local library you have access to!