2016 Corn Thread

[baymule]

What corn are you planting? Pictures please! What corn have you planted in the past and what is your favorite? Sweet, field, flint, flour or popcorn? Record your planting dates, tasseling dates, and harvest dates. I looked back to the 2014 Corn Thread and there was my information for the corn that I planted. So let's have a good corny year!

Many of you posted on the 2014 Corn Thread and you can go back and see what you did, what worked and what didn't. On the 2016 thread, post your zone, variety, planting dates, tassel dates and harvest (fresh or dry) dates. When the harvest is done, compile your information and post it. I'll copy and paste it to the front of this thread. By sharing information, it will help us all decide what varieties to plant.

http://www.theeasygarden.com/threads/corn-thread-for-2014.15230/

April 8, 2016 I planted 7 double rows of Painted Mountain corn, 30 feet long. According to the 2014 Corn Thread, it tasseled at 39 days and I picked and shelled it for dry flour corn in 92 days. So this means I can get a running head start with the Painted Mountain before planting Anasazi Sweet corn, and they won't cross pollinate, for saving seed.

This was my 2014 Painted Mountain corn. Gorgeous isn't it?

 

[baymule]

This space reserved for end of harvest information.

 

[Beekissed]

Planting Ambrosia sweet corn this year...it's an old faithful of mine. Last year I planted that and another kind and the other kind~the name escapes me now~didn't germinate or grow well.

Don't know if I can keep track of all those different things, but can tell you the type I plant. I'm in zone 5B/6 and this will be the first year I get to plant into the composted wood chips, so I'm excited to see how that goes.

Will also change the orientation of my rows this year and will be running east to west instead of north-south. The storms will often lay down my corn so this year I'd like to see if I can provide rows that allow the wind to go through easily instead of creating a barrier.

 

[digitS']

Ha! I would like to turn my rows north/south where the corn grows but the tractor guy has his own orientation where I don't have beds.

Then, I've got to figure out the sprinkler pipe route ...

Bodacious is supposed to be the relative of Ambrosia, if you want to try a yellow, @Beekissed . It might like your garden. I've enjoyed having Ambrosia for quite a long time.

Steve

 

[majorcatfish]

many many years ago tried growing white corn...smut
many years ago tried growing bi-color....smut
ever since have just stuck with sweet yellow<gourmet sweet g121> from stokes, very nice ears full to the tip. corn borers are a problem but we just cut off those tips.
this year trying johnny's <vision mxr sh2> super sweet corn....

the storm winds has always been a problem laying the stalks flat, the last couple years have been growing them in the raised beds, with no flatness during the storms.<maybe i was just lucky>.
this year going to do more corn in the main garden with one trick going to make trenches 6" deep and then plant. once the stalks are 12+" fill them in, this will allow the secondarily roots to grab as well hopefully this will add stability to the stalks during high winds.

this will be a fun and interesting thread to keep alive throughout each of our growing seasons...

 

[thistlebloom]

You're going to have a ton of corn from that plot Bay! I see a lot of corn bread in your future.
I will be planting Painted Mtn. this year also. Hopefully my saved seed is still good.

I'm a lousy record keeper though, so I wouldn't hold your breath on my germination and tassling dates. I can probably manage the harvest date if I give it an effort.

I had some gopher activity last year in the front garden where I was planning on putting the corn... going to try getting them in traps this week. That plot will be getting a fence, so I won't have to worry about the deer eating my crops like they did last year.

 

[digitS']

@thistlebloom , you just have to remember to tell us here. You have TEG friends who want to know!

I ramble on about what others probably consider nuthin'. Tuff! I'm taking notes. Like setting up that shed-attached hoop house in my neighbor's yard, and thru the back fence. I checked TEG: April 8, 11 & 13 on the 3 years I've had it. Can you guess what I'm doing today ?

Thistle', when you drop that first seed in the garden, surely when you strip that first husk - rush right in, get online and tell TEG!

TEG search is pretty good. It will remember what you said. I just used a video production company search. Shoot. The thing couldn't recognize a title!

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

It's too early for me to plant any corn, but I have my seed laid in and am preparing.

Exactly what corn I will end up with remains to be seen (the extreme amounts of damage the local critters do to my corn patch each year means I usually have to re-plant most of it four or five times, and what actually makes it to the point where it could tassel tends to be a sort of amalgam of many kinds as I run out of one set of seed or another.) But my first planting is a my standard of kernels selected last year (from purchased ears of "Indian corn") for a high degree of sharp stippling (the corn kernels in my avatar are stippled ones) That's usually mostly flint (quite a bit being super hard "glassy" flint) with small amounts of dent and more floury kernels. This year I'm intermixing that with some speckled Andean kernels I have picked out of bins of corn from my loca bodega (basically the kinds of corn that are currently in the Baker Creek explorer series. I know I'm way too short season to get ear formation from those, but if I am lucky some of their pollen can get mixed into the population.

Second string, who knows? One or more of the "prime" stipple samples (to qualify as "prime" it has to have come from an ear in which 60% of more of the kernels have superior stipple. Those get storage vessels of their own? What's left of my supply of mini corns (from a few years ago, miniature eared corns that are not pop corns.

I also have tiny amounts of Malagasy Red and Volta white corn left from Ricter's seeds, but I probably will save those, as the amounts I have left are SO tiny they'd get swamped out by everything else and I can't get more of either (note to anyone who buys from Ricter's Ignore the link to the Volta white they currently have up. It's a mistake, they don't have it anymore.)

 

[Beekissed]

Ha! I would like to turn my rows north/south where the corn grows but the tractor guy has his own orientation where I don't have beds.

Then, I've got to figure out the sprinkler pipe route ...

Bodacious is supposed to be the relative of Ambrosia, if you want to try a yellow, @Beekissed . It might like your garden. I've enjoyed having Ambrosia for quite a long time.

Steve

THAT was the name of the corn I couldn't remember from last year! Bodacious! That was the corn that didn't germinate nor grow when it did germinate, while the Ambrosia did better than I thought it would under the circumstances in my garden.

 

[baymule]

THAT was the name of the corn I couldn't remember from last year! Bodacious! That was the corn that didn't germinate nor grow when it did germinate, while the Ambrosia did better than I thought it would under the circumstances in my garden.

Exactly why we need to record all the information we can on our corn plantings!