A Seed Saver's Garden

[Jack Holloway]

Well, I can try, though I'm not sure corn could use up all of its stored food before the root system got bigger than 3 inches.

Luther Burbank used to presprout corn for his market garden (this was before he became known as a plant breeder) to get a jump on his competitors. It let him get his corn harvest two weeks earlier than anyone else. Maybe this would stop the critters from getting your corn seed.

Rex Stout's sister Ruth Stout (the mother of mulching) had a covered cage built for her corn garden. Chain link, 6' high, concrete foundation, to keep the critters out of her corn. Expensive, but it worked.

Maybe just removeable cages for to protect the seeds till they are up?

I'm sure you've thought of all this and don't need any help.

From some of your posts, you sound like you know quite a bit about corn genetics; have any references you would share?

 

[donna13350]

A couple of years ago I saw corn plants for sale at Lowes...I was shocked ! I always thought I had to start them outside, but I have seen transplants work since then..I have a friend that starts them in a tray filled with potting mix, then just pulls them apart and transplants them when they're about 6-8 inches tall. She always get corn and I don't see any problem with it,
As for me..I grow early varieties so don't need the extra jump on time that a transplant would presumably give me, but I do need the space for my other seedlings. I guess it could be an advantage in a place with a very short season and a long maturing variety, but it's just not going to work for me.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Not really, I just picked up things here and there by reading online and asking questions elsewhere from people who know better. Corn genetics are INCREDIBLY complex (remember Barbra McClintock only scratched the surface of them, and she got a Noble Prize for doing even that.)

And there are still some things I don't have a clue about, like purple endosperm corn (I have seen it, and my teachers in school mentioned, but the biggest corn expert on my other plant forum denies its existence, chalking up all purple endosperm to purple in corn sap staining the kernel (I maintain that, if it was that, the stuff wouldn't STAY purple when you popped it, which it does (if you can find it in a popcorn kernel; like a lot of the quirky corn genes, it's commoner in the Andean corn population than in the lowland and north American ones.)

Cage has the same problem as the pots do, buying 100 metal cages would bankrupt me. And any fence I put up the animals just dig under (and I can't dig it down all the way around or there nowhere for me to get in and water, I can't reach the whole patch from outside. I need some sort of a gate or door)

Part of the problem is that few people who I know approach corn the way I am. They're looking for maximum yield, or hardiness, or nutritional content. The concept of growing something for pure ornamental interest seems pointless to them, and growing a type that actually LOSES on their desires, downright insane. Far too many people, when I ask for help or advice with my corn say "Destroy it all and devote your land to growing MY CORN, for MY benefit." Even Carol Deppe, who I respect greatly for her knowledge of native seeds, when I actually had a chance to be in an online conversation with her, seemed to be less interested in giving me any useful tips and more on shilling her own varieties by disparaging everyone else's. And when I tried to set up a pool on the OSSI, the only people who joined either joined to tell me the idea was stupid, or to call me a racist, since I thought I could get away with naming the corn after an entity from Native American mythology (that part was probably valid, but some of them said even trying to MAKE a new variety of corn was an insult to the Native Americans and their heirloom seeds.)

 

[meadow]

I guess it could be an advantage in a place with a very short season and a long maturing variety, but it's just not going to work for me.

Also if someone near you grows corn! The guy behind us has grown lots of corn for feeding cattle (perhaps silage? I don't know), even using neighborhood acreage that is otherwise not in use. Last year he toned it down quite a bit... but if I can get corn to pollinate before his does, then I don't have to worry so much about crossing. I've only grown corn once many years ago and it took a loss from an exuberant young Gordon Setter bounding around in it.

@Jack Holloway @Pulsegleaner So what is this about pop corn not crossing with other corn?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Also if someone near you grows corn! The guy behind us has grown lots of corn for feeding cattle (perhaps silage? I don't know), even using neighborhood acreage that is otherwise not in use. Last year he toned it down quite a bit... but if I can get corn to pollinate before his does, then I don't have to worry so much about crossing. I've only grown corn once many years ago and it took a loss from an exuberant young Gordon Setter bounding around in it.

@Jack Holloway @Pulsegleaner So what is this about pop corn not crossing with other corn?

As far as I understand, many popcorns have a group of genes called the "p" complex, and, if a corn has that, it can take pollen from any corn that does NOT have that complex. But the specifics I'm a little hazy one. Someone said that all sweet corns also have the p complex, but if that were the case, you'd see sweet/pop hybrids all the time, and you generally don't (you see a few, but no more than sweet on anything else.) And there are ways to bridge the gap to get genes from one group to the other.

Part of the problem I have is that, unlike all of the other corns, telling the difference between a popcorn and an ordinary flint corn without cutting a kernel open or trying to pop it is hard to do visually, so when I am buying random unknown corn, I have to guess a lot.

 

[heirloomgal]

Have you thought of starting your corn inside a couple of weeks before planting time? Years ago I read that corn plants handle a bit of cold better than the seed, so I started mine indoors, then transplanted to the garden when they were about 6 inches tall. Maybe that would discourage the critters from eating the seeds. Just an ideer to think about.

edited to add: Sorry, I see you were asked about transplants already. I'm searching for popcorn, and didn't read the 25 pages after your post. Mea culpa.

I do corn transplants too @Jack Holloway. Has worked real well for me, and I can be a corn 'banger upper' too. I too was VERY curious to read @Pulsegleaner 's post about some corn types not crossing with others. I'd LOVE to grow two types of corn in one year, because one per year is a chafing limitation. I bought 'Rootbeer' popcorn from Siskiyou, and 'Morado' so I'd love to grow them both in 2023 - or any other non-popcorn corn that I got this year. But.....I'm really afraid that they might cross. That would be a loss of 2 corn varieties - which were costly - and the loss of both those potential harvests. I've never been much of a gambler and I'm risk averse. But if it did actually work.....

 

[heirloomgal]

Well, I can try, though I'm not sure corn could use up all of its stored food before the root system got bigger than 3 inches.

I've been doing transplants for years @Pulsegleaner, and true confession, when I started I had never heard that corn doesn't transplant well (I have read that since though) and I used to plant 2 seeds in a pot one month in advance and then RIP them apart as I transplanted. Why waste a perfectly good plant I thought? lol Yes, I broke all kinds of roots and damaged them. But you know, they always grew well anyway. I don't do that anymore of course, I don't even put more than one seed in a pot because my corn always comes up 100% so it isn't necessary. But, needless to say, I find it works real well, even if they get 'rooty'. I find corn such a weedy plant! lol

 

[Jack Holloway]

Also if someone near you grows corn! The guy behind us has grown lots of corn for feeding cattle (perhaps silage? I don't know), even using neighborhood acreage that is otherwise not in use. Last year he toned it down quite a bit... but if I can get corn to pollinate before his does, then I don't have to worry so much about crossing. I've only grown corn once many years ago and it took a loss from an exuberant young Gordon Setter bounding around in it.

@Jack Holloway @Pulsegleaner So what is this about pop corn not crossing with other corn?

I really don't know that much about corn genetics. Just that it is complicated, as @Pulsegleaner said.

I read (in the last 10 years) that sweet corn pollen can be blown by wind up to 5 miles from the field. Which means living in the Willamette Valley here in Oregon means there is no way to be sure (unless you bag your ears and tassels) that your corn didn't get crossed with something. Dr. Alan Kapuler told me once, when I was worried about keeping a corn variety pure, why worry? Just select the best from what you grow and don't worry about it was his paraphrased remark.

Sorry for hijacking your thread @heirloomgal Mea culpa.

 

[heirloomgal]

I really don't know that much about corn genetics. Just that it is complicated, as @Pulsegleaner said.

I read (in the last 10 years) that sweet corn pollen can be blown by wind up to 5 miles from the field. Which means living in the Willamette Valley here in Oregon means there is no way to be sure (unless you bag your ears and tassels) that your corn didn't get crossed with something. Dr. Alan Kapuler told me once, when I was worried about keeping a corn variety pure, why worry? Just select the best from what you grow and don't worry about it was his paraphrased remark.

Sorry for hijacking your thread @heirloomgal Mea culpa.

You can 'hijack' my thread anytime Jack! I love it!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I really don't know that much about corn genetics. Just that it is complicated, as @Pulsegleaner said.

I read (in the last 10 years) that sweet corn pollen can be blown by wind up to 5 miles from the field. Which means living in the Willamette Valley here in Oregon means there is no way to be sure (unless you bag your ears and tassels) that your corn didn't get crossed with something. Dr. Alan Kapuler told me once, when I was worried about keeping a corn variety pure, why worry? Just select the best from what you grow and don't worry about it was his paraphrased remark.

Sorry for hijacking your thread @heirloomgal Mea culpa.

I've sometimes wondered if, in places where EVERYONE if growing corn (i.e. The Corn Belt) everyone has to meet up in advance of planting season with a map and a list of what variety(s) they are growing, work out where everyone has to put and orient their fields to make sure there isn't cross contamination, and agree to hold by the decisions made (basically, a Corn Covenant). With most of the commercial strains patented, and many of them having GMO proprietary genes, after the whole Monsanto contamination incident lawsuits a few years back, I'd imagine farmers are willing to go to great lengths to make sure their crop stays pure and salable.)

Most of my stuff, on the other hand, comes from a total LACK of any sort of regulation. At least 70-80% of the seed I hold all came from a single farmers market stand, which was semi famous for two things 1. getting most of their seed for a given year by extracting it from whatever didn't sell the previous year (i.e. when a tomato got squished or went rotten, into the seed bin it went) and 2. planting whatever types they wanted, an not caring in the least about what crossed with what. This meant that the produce there was always a wild array of God knows what, where you could never be TOTALLY sure if what you were buying was actually the variety you thought it was, and odd mixes abounded. I found MANY odd looking tomatoes there I extracted seed from (unfortunately, no matter what their tomatoes LOOKED like, they all tended to TASTE the same (pretty awful) so trying to get ones that might be WORTH keeping up was a matter of buying saving the seed, and hoping that the progeny tasted OK when grown under your own watch.)

One Wednesday in fall, many years ago (probably almost twenty now). I was at their booth and I started looking at their miniature corn bunches (for ornaments) I noticed that a lot of them looked odd, in that they were much shorter and fatter than such ears usually are. And since, at that time, the only short stubby eared mini-corn I knew of was Strawberry, I started taking a closer look. The more I looked, the more odd this corn looked. It was small, but the kernel shapes on many were those of full sized ears, and the color palette was also much wider than I was used to seeing. Then I started finding ears with kernels that had the kind of mottling I was looking for at the time, plus cobs with kernels that appeared floury or dented.

Over that season I bought a TON of that corn, and picked the most interesting kernels to save (the only downside is that, apparently the corn must have been somewhat old and poorly stored when I found it, so most ears were infested with granary moths. I managed to eradicate them, but that means I could keep no ears intact for reference.) And then it was back the next year, so I repeated the process. By year three, there was a change, in that most of the ears now had normal carrot shapes, but there were still a few colorful, floury and dented (plus, between the seasons, three ears that actually had some sweet corn kernels mixed in.) By year four, it was all over, and their corn looked exactly like everyone else's. What happened there to let those corns cross like that, I'll never know, but it left me with a lot of miniature non-pop corn to play around with.