I am going to split things into a couple of different posts. We have been exceptionally busy, and not all of what I would consider good. There have been issues with the gardens and predation by animals. Patti lost her father. Neither Patti nor I have completely recovered from the physical stresses of the vacation we took. We are both frustrated with our bodies unwillingness to do all of the things we want them to do. Gets us a bit down at times. Load that on top of everything else and doing more than harvesting what we could was all we could do.
I am pulling corn out. Not a ton of it yet, and I have lost far more than I have harvested. Raccoons and deer have wiped out a couple thousand plants of corn. The only thing not touched is the popcorn which sets higher, and is a few weeks behind. Today I made a concerted effort to pull anything that was even starting to show signs of browning on the husks in an effort to deprive the masked villians. But for some things, the damage is done. I will have seed to regrow a few of my experiments, but not enough to select for traits I was hoping to work with. For two kinds of corn, where I planted only about 300 plants each, I got fewer than a dozen cobs of each.
The Pink Flour, shown above, is still showing a majority of white cobs, or white with just indistinct pink speckling. Perhaps it is because I am picking it so early in its maturity and as they dry down it will darken. I Guess I will find out.
I was hoping for a more overall pink color, and I will back-cross the expressions I have to seeds from last year when I plant it again hoping to reinforce the trait. Raccoons have removed about 25% of this corn, which was about a thousand plants. They favor the largest and earliest maturing ones. Really pisses me off. Oh well.
I picked 2 bushels, of 4 different varieties. Mostly, in number, from the Pink Flour and the planting of the blue speckled selection from the Wamneheza.
I would say that about half of the blue speckled show that trait really well. Others are anywhere from the general mix of colors, to even some showing mostly white flour.
Once again, the raccoons have worked this patch over as well. Half to a third of it is gone, and of that nearly all was the largest and earliest ears.
Of my experimental sweet corn, this is the ONLY full ear I got out of it. Guess the raccoons thought this was especially tasty. I salvaged a few partial ears where the coons missed a few kernels on them and hope they dry down and are viable for seed.
I am hoping they are done with the field. I saw no discernible new damage from two days ago to today, so maybe they are done. One can hope. The Iroquois White Flour is just maturing now and I lost that one nearly entirely last year so this year I was hoping to really replenish what I have stored. It is the sweetest of my flour corns, but the ears of a lot are not set as high as they were prior to the windstorm a few weeks ago. Next week, I think, I can harvest a good amount of that one.
Wow! What a tragedy! Would having dogs patrol the field help? Is it legal to set traps for them, even maybe the live-catch so they can be relocated? Hope things go better…
yes, it is legal, and I tried, but to no avail. They preferred their corn to start on the plant, and not a baited cage. I sweetened the ante with tinned sardines, which is a no-fail bait here in town, but no, they still just worked on the corn. Annoying. It is what it is. If I lived out where it was planted I would have sat out overnight, spotlighted them, and shot them, but I don’t, couldn’t, and did not. Relocating raccoons is illegal. If they are raiding the gardens, it is legal to kill them, but not legal to transport them alive.
Is the pink flour corn you are working on developed from your Iroquois or Arikara or something else? My growout of the Arikara seed you gave me went poorly due to growing conditions but I did get some really beautiful ears for use as seed stock.
Lots of my Arikara has pink traits. I am going to pull out any seed with those pink traits so I can get the stock back to pure white. I also got two heavily pink-seeded ears – these two ears are not the best regarding size but they are fairly well developed. I can save them for you if you think they might be useful for development of heavier pink hues in your stock, assuming your pink flour is Arikara-based (if that matters). LMK if you want them.
Question: Do you like Iroquois corn better than Arikara?
-Renville Tom
The Pink Flour is derived from the Arikara White Flour corn stock I started with, crossed with white flour kernels that manifested on Mandan White Flint cobs. I saved and planted just the pinks separately, and planted those as the middle row in a 5 row grow out of the Arikara/Mandan, and saved the pink again (reason being to prevent inbreeding depression) and then saved the pinks again. I grew just the pinks this year, and got about 20% pink manifestation, but at very varying degrees of “pinkness”. Still all flour, but high variability of cob types. Just did it as a curiosity more than anything else and not sure if I will continue to pursue it.
There are pluses and minuses to the Arikara and the Iroquois flour corns. For dependability, the Arikara is much better in a few respects. In regards to lodging, the Arikara is much better, so the ears stay off the ground because the stalks are less likely to blow down in the wind. If you are protected from the wind, Iroquois will give you a much higher yield. The Arikara is a sweet flour, but the Iroquois is even sweeter. Iroquois cobs are much longer, even though the Arikara are not short. Iroquois can get 14″ long, while most of the best Arikara cobs will be about 10″ long.
Both set their ears far enough off the ground that mice are not an issue. As I learned this year, if they are determined enough, cob set at higher points is not a deterrent if they are hungry enough. I lost a majority of my Iroquois to critters, due to the stalks being laid down by a high wind. I lost some Arikara to the same issue, but most of what I lose was due to the stalks being pulled down by raccoons, and not as many as a percentage of what I lost with the Iroquois.
I have a good number of white flour manifestation in the speckled blue flour corn, and am contemplating trying those seeds planted alone as those plants (selected from the Wamneheza flour) have shown lodging resistance matched only by the red popcorn I am developing.
As far as sharing the pink seeds, I guess I would like to trade pink for pink just to maintain and increase diversity so that the seeds I plant in the future (assuming I pursue that experiment) are as protected as possible from inbreeding depression.
Tom
I harvested one beautiful Arikara 10 row ear and one somewhat acceptable 12 row ear. The 10 row ear was on a stalk that was standing while all others around it had lodged. The ear also went into the downward tilt on the stalk once it had matured. Most others had matured in the upward position. I like the downward tilt trait because it helps protect the ear from rain damage. Even with the downward tilt the tip of the ear was still around 12 inches off the ground. I am going to make sure some of the seeds from that ear are saved for replanting. I want my Arikara strain to have more seed rows…
You are getting me hooked on growing corn and messing around with the genetics. 🙂 The bummer still remains that modern GM corns are grown all around me. Nothing I can do about that so I choose not to let it ruin my fun.
The guy who farms immediately around my acreage is planting field corn here next season. I knew it was due up in the rotation. Can’t plant my heirloom stuff next year but I am going to plant miniature popcorn. You gave me a healthy supply of Kucyk corn so I may plant a patch of it as I am really interested in seeing it for myself. I will probably consider any harvest of it to be genetically contaminated, though.
Maybe a crazy question, but would you happen to know the life span of a corn pollen grain? Can a person harvest pollen from early-tassling plants, save it for when later ears on other plants start to silk, and then use it to hand-pollinate those ears? Point would be to push the breeding stock to earlier maturation in a (hopefully) quicker fashion.
Harvested sweet potatoes that I rooted last winter. 🙂 I posted an update photo on my old sweet potato thread on GW, if you are interested in viewing.
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cornucop/msg1213394630896.html?25
I also posted a photo of my container tomato “tree” on GW. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cornucop/msg091326185947.html?12
Hopefully I got those links correct…
-Renville Tom
Damn. That is one tall tomato plant. Not kidding about it being a tree. Might get a few cords of lumber off of it when it dies and dries down for cooking down syrup in the spring. In regards to the pollen: It is fairly short lived, being minutes or hours off of the plant. High winds can spread it quite a ways, but from what I have read, 2 miles is sufficient, even with winds, to prevent crossing, leading me to believe that very quickly it desiccates out and becomes dead flotsam on the winds.
Next year, I am planning on trying the sweet potatoes. And regular potatoes as well. I would have been up to digging them this fall if I had been up to planting them last spring.
Tom