Looking for Gaspe Flint Corn, US Supplier

[Hal]

Yes, Painted Mountain, which is a great variety, takes a little too long here to grow on natural rain fall.

Thanks for the pointer to Bear Island Flint. I will start searching for that now.

Concerning my planting time, I can plant in the last week of June in anticipation of the rains. (BTW, a terrible time be outside because of the no-see-ums, but they are not active until 9 AM.) Deep down, about 10 inches, there is some moisture in the soil, but there are issues with planting that deep. Not all varieties seem to tolerate it, although I have read that some were bred for it. Still, it can take a while to come up all that way. Some corn (Painted Mountain) that I planted that deep back in late May are up now (another experiment) and are about 4 inches tall. However, only 50% made it. I do not think that the germination was that bad. I think it was the depth, but I will do a germination test on the seed (I bought it for this year, so it is not supposed to be old seed).

Concerning my profile, I need to figure it out a bit better. I need to put up location and a profile picture. I have no need to be anonymous.

For location, Candy Kitchen, New Mexico, which is no place at all, although nice enough to have a Wikipedia entry, I hear... I have never looked at it. We are all just a bunch of odd balls living on marginal land... pretty, if you like austere, but everybody close by here a hundred years ago tended to be rather thin most of the year.

I think there might be a Bear Island Flint source in the US, otherwise if I am mistaken it will be Canada but either way good to have the name in case you come across it one day.

Now you have sufficient soil moisture but too far down, when I've had that issue I've placed the corn in a furrow in contact with the moisture and with enough soil on top the stop it drying out but to give a more suitable planting depth and then as the plants grow I've gone and hilled up the soil around them as they have grown when there was sufficient rain of course but in dry times I've used the furrow as a means to deliver water direct to the roots of the plants when I have had water to irrigate them.

Candy Kitchen would make a memorable name for a corn you end up breeding!

 

[Kevin B Walsh]

I think there might be a Bear Island Flint source in the US, otherwise if I am mistaken it will be Canada but either way good to have the name in case you come across it one day.

Now you have sufficient soil moisture but too far down, when I've had that issue I've placed the corn in a furrow in contact with the moisture and with enough soil on top the stop it drying out but to give a more suitable planting depth and then as the plants grow I've gone and hilled up the soil around them as they have grown when there was sufficient rain of course but in dry times I've used the furrow as a means to deliver water direct to the roots of the plants when I have had water to irrigate them.

Candy Kitchen would make a memorable name for a corn you end up breeding!

Ah, that furrow that is filled in over time is a brilliant idea.

This year, I tried 6x6 foot sunken beds with mulch on top. It seems like a related technique. I will need to give some thought to the mechanics.

I am tempted, next year, to put depressions within the sunken bed. I like to plant in clumps as opposed to rows... not that I would need that for Gaspe or Bear Island Flint, perhaps, because I can sow those late. Ideally, I would like a good white hominy corn, but any corn at all comes first, so Gaspe is on the list. Ultimately, if I cannot grow on rainfall, I do have access to a well, but that solution is not very sustainable, and there are other issues, such as salt, which I know how to manage here.

Concerning Bear Island Flint, it was hard to find, but I found a reference at "Seed Savers". They also list Gaspe Flint. I will need to look into the mechanics of purchase from them. It might be pricey. Oh, I must get back out into the garden.

 

[baymule]

I looked up Candy Kitchen N.M. and Wikipedia said it is 60 miles to the grocery store. No wonder you want to find a corn variety that will grow for you!

In studying permaculture, one of the things that can be done is to bury wood, branches, or rotted wood in the garden. This method is called hugelculture. The idea is (haven't done this myself) that the buried wood will saturate and hold water in dry soils and slowly decompose, releasing carbon into the soil. I don't know what kind of wood you have, brush or any kind of thing like that. I wonder if cardboard or straw would work towards holding water in the soil. Those might be more readily available to you.

We will be moving 160 miles to northeast Texas and the soil is sand. Like beach sand. Sand. Since there are some pine trees we don't want, we're going to drop them, scoop the dirt out in the garden area with the tractor and then bury them. So we'll be trying this hugelculture out. But we do have the advantage over you in that we get rain and quite a lot of it. Just have to figure out how to keep it in the soil and available to the plants.

 

[Kevin B Walsh]

I looked up Candy Kitchen N.M. and Wikipedia said it is 60 miles to the grocery store. No wonder you want to find a corn variety that will grow for you!

In studying permaculture, one of the things that can be done is to bury wood, branches, or rotted wood in the garden. This method is called hugelculture. The idea is (haven't done this myself) that the buried wood will saturate and hold water in dry soils and slowly decompose, releasing carbon into the soil. I don't know what kind of wood you have, brush or any kind of thing like that. I wonder if cardboard or straw would work towards holding water in the soil. Those might be more readily available to you.

We will be moving 160 miles to northeast Texas and the soil is sand. Like beach sand. Sand. Since there are some pine trees we don't want, we're going to drop them, scoop the dirt out in the garden area with the tractor and then bury them. So we'll be trying this hugelculture out. But we do have the advantage over you in that we get rain and quite a lot of it. Just have to figure out how to keep it in the soil and available to the plants.

Sand is tough, perhaps the toughest, I hear, but with rain (and probably a longer season), you might be able to grow all the carbon and nitrogen that you need, although it could take a couple of years just growing your amendments. I am not expert in the subject... sort of learning as we go along.

We have junipers and pinyon here, and they are a bit "thin on the ground." We have had to chop down a few, but we did not waste the carbon. It is slowly breaking down. Our soil is clay with some sand, lots of alkaline, excessive magnesium, excessive potassium, deficient in calcium, deficient in phosphate, and so on... so, not great, but it is improvable. We added a few minerals (as indicated by a soil test). Only gypsum was required in quantity, but not excessive and gypsum is cheap. I hear that there is a gypsum mine outside of Grants, so I guess I know where all our calcium leached to over the eons. We are still working on our soil. Some areas are in good shape now. Others will take a while longer. The corn squares are newest and so are the worst off, but I will fix that, over time. Corn is the last project. Our first project (after building our housing) was to grow fresh vegetables, which are expensive. Grains are cheap and easily bought and stored in quantity.

We have to be careful about salt. I think that is not so much of a problem in sandy soil because the drainage is so good... OK, sometimes excessive and you lose all your water, but organic matter can fix that, I hear.

There are always problems, and, it seems, almost always fixes and workarounds. We also have some hoop houses for fresh vegetables and for extending the season on fresh vegetables---we have fresh collards up until Christmas, Chinese cabbage until January, and lots of o put up or frozen veggies for the hiatus. Then, for "spring" we have baby bok choy by late March. We are vegetarian, so it is important to us, and the supermarkets are 60 miles away. The hoops also let us create warm nights for tomatoes. Otherwise, they do not do well here because our nights are so chilly (that is tough on non-adapted corn too). I also love my tomatoes and eggplants and yard-long beans. Oh, I love those yard-longs, and they are the only string bean my sweetie will eat. None of that would grow well here without the hoop houses---so not purely sustainable.

You might want to consider a hoop house, depending on your conditions and finances. We constructed a 16x36 hoop house for $2000 in materials. We have two of those so far, and we will finish construction on our third (and final) hoop house within the month. They make a big difference here. They might not be so important where you are going. Aside from pinyons, this place really does not want to produce food---unless you like eating elk, which I hear are tasty... and I certainly won't call down fish and game on any poachers. For better or worse, there are no poachers here, just large herds of elk.

 

[baymule]

I found a really good discussion about growing corn in the desert

http://www.permies.com/t/31794/desert/Desert-Corn-Growing-Techniques

and this is about building swales to retain moisture

http://www.permies.com/t/28312/earthworks/Earthworks-Plants

 

[thistlebloom]

Kevin, I'll do my best to help you out!

 

[Joe Haynes]

Hi Kevin,

If I can successfully grow the corn, I will be glad to share some of the seed with you in the same generous spirit in which Thistlebloom shared it with me. I didn't have success last season planting a few of the seeds. Any tips for improving my success are appreciated.

Joe

 

[seedcorn]

Hand pollinate, easy.

 

[thistlebloom]

@Joe Haynes , was it a germination problem or a production/pollination
problem?

 

[Joe Haynes]

I am not knowledgeable enough to know what the problem was. All I can tell you is that we tried to germinate the seed in small pots and it failed. No plants emerged at all that we could transplant into a garden.

It would be helpful to now a process for growing the plants. In Virginia, corn flourishes but the way we plant other types of corn just didn't work with the Gaspe corn. Can you provide a suggested step by step process?

Thanks
Joe