This is another place holder pic waiting for the video to upload and get accepted over on you tube ( which just seems to be adding more issues every few days right now) I may end up switching platforms before this is over things are getting so strict and all.
Anyway I ended up saving about 13 or 14 ears for seed saving after I had a long chat with my neighbor. If you remember it was this neighbor's grand kids who own the dirt track and trucks I mentioned a few weeks back. As it turns out that neighbor used to actually grow and save his own sweet corn with his father years ago and clued me in on some secrets.
Jut as I suspected Sweet Corn used to be a lot more common around here but, according to my source it got a lot more scarce in larger field around the 40's and 50' when most farmers in this area switched to feed corn and Milo. Then a long time after that he said people would plant it regularly but It was slowly replaced by store bought seeds as no one could regrow the field stuff as easily.
Apparently it is much harder to grow in small areas and he complains that few new people even bother to grow it anymore.
He is right but I have almost always grown it, but as he mentioned I used a purchased variety and did in small plots. The major problems he mentioned were what I had kinda decided on my own, outside of large supporting groups or inside a very protected area it was almost always destroyed before the season was half over.
He also mentioned the other problem I had thought about that Corn can and will cross pollinate a long ways with the wind. He mentioned others from long ago that had tried special varieties only to find it back to the same as everyone else's a few years later. Another warning he gave was that protected ( I think he meant patented) varieties can sometimes cross breed as well.
With these warnings in mind I decided to take a few cobs from each variety I had planted and try and dry them out for next years reseeding.
I stripped out a few good ears from each type and tied em up for hanging inside this Winter. Any that were too badly damaged or more than I thought I may need I fed to the following Sheep and Goat herds that were watching me like a hawk. I tied em up and hung em outside the old office porch until I can install a rack inside the office building.
A few other useful tidbits of knowledge were that the Corn with concave ends on the kernels means they had been in the husk already drying longer. Black specks inside the kernels meant they were Male kernels, which he told me meant nothing with old heritage varieties and that too his knowledge as long as the ears were formed drying inside the husk was no different than hanging even if the ears were younger. He admitted however that it was a long time ago and only one type he had planted.
I guess the adventure begins on a new Small Hold Corn Variety now.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
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