Northernizing every flint corn
So it looks like I'm keeping my garden up north for this full season. What does that mean? It means I can be more hands-on here with some corn.
A brilliant plant breeder on one of my forums does something he calls a "pollen patch": instead of trying to plant the corns all together and hope they cross properly, he plants a bunch of the pollinator corn pretty close, not so that it'll grow ears but just so it'll produce a bunch of pollen. He de-tassels (removes the pollen-producing body part) from the mother corns in the well-spaced patch, and dusts them with pollen from the pollen patch when it's ripe. In this way he can thoroughly mix up the pollen and distribute it without both control and a lot of saved space.
Brilliant, because it divorces the concept of pollination from proximity.
I plan on using this schema to northernize/gaspe-ize a bunch of corns this year.
Gaspe is challenging to breed with because it is so short season, so it doesn't flower at the same time as the other corns. I was trying to think of ways to plant it later into an established corn patch, which seemed weird. Because of this idea of seperation, what I can do is plant all the corns I want to cross (no need to space them tightly and prevent them from self-pollinating in my case, there's plenty of pollen to go around) and then start planting gaspe in patches, one every week or so. As the pollen donor corns come into flower I can transfer each type over to the gaspe, label that patch with the pollen donor, label the next patch with the next pollen donor, and so on. It saves me from having to know how fast everything will grow and when flowering time is, too.
I'm just so awed and impressed by this concept.
Anyhow, this year I want to pollinate gaspe with a bunch of other interesting, short season corns, including: some atomic orange from an oceanside farm in California, Cascade Ruby-Gold if I can get it to grow, painted mountain, mountain morado, maybe double red and blue jade (which are sweets), saskatoon white, oaxacan green dent, floriani, maybe early riser, new york dent, and saskatchewan rainbow but realistically although this is a super space-efficient method eight or ten is enough.
It's also important to me to see how my magic manna saved corn from last year does, I'll need to isolate it a fair bit and also isolate or bag some Morden, and then have a seperate patch of gaspe. Hm. Gotta play with the layout some, I may need to take down some trees after all.
But! If I do all these crosses it's a huge step towards very, very short season diversity up here.
Some squash and beans in those fields, and some lettuce and brassicas left to go to seed, and I'm happy. But more on those later. This is just me sitting here loving corn, and loving gaspe so much I want to make fascinating things with it that everyone will want to grow so its genes can go on forever and ever, not as a novelty but as a real part of food systems.
And honestly a very short-cropping corn isn't only useful up here; it's also useful in the lull between flood and wildfire, or drought and frost, or before tornado season, or whatever else is going on out there.
Meanwhile I have a tray of promiscuous tomatoes, a tray of tomatoes that did well last year, and several trays (bigger pots, fewer plants) of favourite breeding tomatoes.
Turns out even with uncertainty it's still a good spring.
And I can grow a bunch of of corn out down south still, which will provide food and seed for the following year but won't need much supervision: painted mountain, and early riser/homestead yellow dent/new york red/cascade ruby gold.
A brilliant plant breeder on one of my forums does something he calls a "pollen patch": instead of trying to plant the corns all together and hope they cross properly, he plants a bunch of the pollinator corn pretty close, not so that it'll grow ears but just so it'll produce a bunch of pollen. He de-tassels (removes the pollen-producing body part) from the mother corns in the well-spaced patch, and dusts them with pollen from the pollen patch when it's ripe. In this way he can thoroughly mix up the pollen and distribute it without both control and a lot of saved space.
Brilliant, because it divorces the concept of pollination from proximity.
I plan on using this schema to northernize/gaspe-ize a bunch of corns this year.
Gaspe is challenging to breed with because it is so short season, so it doesn't flower at the same time as the other corns. I was trying to think of ways to plant it later into an established corn patch, which seemed weird. Because of this idea of seperation, what I can do is plant all the corns I want to cross (no need to space them tightly and prevent them from self-pollinating in my case, there's plenty of pollen to go around) and then start planting gaspe in patches, one every week or so. As the pollen donor corns come into flower I can transfer each type over to the gaspe, label that patch with the pollen donor, label the next patch with the next pollen donor, and so on. It saves me from having to know how fast everything will grow and when flowering time is, too.
I'm just so awed and impressed by this concept.
Anyhow, this year I want to pollinate gaspe with a bunch of other interesting, short season corns, including: some atomic orange from an oceanside farm in California, Cascade Ruby-Gold if I can get it to grow, painted mountain, mountain morado, maybe double red and blue jade (which are sweets), saskatoon white, oaxacan green dent, floriani, maybe early riser, new york dent, and saskatchewan rainbow but realistically although this is a super space-efficient method eight or ten is enough.
It's also important to me to see how my magic manna saved corn from last year does, I'll need to isolate it a fair bit and also isolate or bag some Morden, and then have a seperate patch of gaspe. Hm. Gotta play with the layout some, I may need to take down some trees after all.
But! If I do all these crosses it's a huge step towards very, very short season diversity up here.
Some squash and beans in those fields, and some lettuce and brassicas left to go to seed, and I'm happy. But more on those later. This is just me sitting here loving corn, and loving gaspe so much I want to make fascinating things with it that everyone will want to grow so its genes can go on forever and ever, not as a novelty but as a real part of food systems.
And honestly a very short-cropping corn isn't only useful up here; it's also useful in the lull between flood and wildfire, or drought and frost, or before tornado season, or whatever else is going on out there.
Meanwhile I have a tray of promiscuous tomatoes, a tray of tomatoes that did well last year, and several trays (bigger pots, fewer plants) of favourite breeding tomatoes.
Turns out even with uncertainty it's still a good spring.
And I can grow a bunch of of corn out down south still, which will provide food and seed for the following year but won't need much supervision: painted mountain, and early riser/homestead yellow dent/new york red/cascade ruby gold.