let's see your veggie garden {pics}

[ChinaVoodoo]

Melungeons. I'm quite curious. Gonna read on that.
I've never had a worm in a cucumber, Bob. That's strange.

So what's up with my corn? I chose, perhaps unwisely, an SH2 variety. It's hardly growing. But, it appears I'm getting pollination. There is from one to three cobs on each one. The soil is good. The tobacco, cantaloupe, and cucumbers in the same bed are all excelling.

 

[deluxestogie]

I don't know much about the super sweet corn varieties. I do know that they must be at least 500 feet away from other corn varieties, otherwise you get hinky genetics, and they produce field corn.

http://www.crookham.com/sweet-corn-genotypes

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/can-plant-different-varieties-corn-together-garden-97293.html

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Do you think that so long as there are cobs, I shouldn't worry about how short the plants are?
There are a couple people in my neighborhood growing corn, but they haven't flowered yet from what I've seen.

 

[skychaser]

I don't know much about the super sweet corn varieties. I do know that they must be at least 500 feet away from other corn varieties, otherwise you get hinky genetics, and they produce field corn.

You need closer to 2 miles of separation for corn to ensure purity and no cross pollination. Since corn is a "grass", the pollen is very light and wind born. It also is short lived being viable for just a few hours in a natural environment. If you don't plan on saving seed, it makes no difference what varieties pollinate it. The crosses would only show up in next years crop.

I wouldn't worry about the size of the plants if it producing decent ears. That is probably just due to the strain. I grew Yukon King for sustainable seed co a few years back. It is a super early maturing strain developed in Fairbanks AK for very short growing seasons. It only got about 4' to 5' high and was completely done and dried by mid August. It yielded 2-3 small ears per plant. It was ok eating but no where near as good as modern day sweet corns. Some hybrid sweet corns have a sugar content near 40% these days.

We grew Hopi Blue corn one year for SSC too. It got 12' to 14' high. The few ears we got were very nice ears but very late in maturing. Most ears never matured before the season ended. It tipped over in the rain and wind, and was a bitch to even water without it going down. I will never grow it again. For the past 3 years we have been growing a rare multi colored dent corn for Baker Creek Seed called Big Horse Spotted corn. It's a beautiful eared flour corn and we get good $$ for the seed, but it sucks for just eating. Since we can only grow one strain per year, we end up buying or trading for some decent sweet corn to eat.

 

[deluxestogie]

If you don't plan on saving seed, it makes no difference what varieties pollinate it. The crosses would only show up in next years crop.

That's true from a plant propagation standpoint, but not true if you plan to eat the kernels. Next year's crop is the seed that you eat. The cells that comprise the kernel's tissues display the traits of next year's crop. This is also the situation with any plant crop in which the desired product is the seed (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, tree nuts, mustard, dried beans, lentils, canola, coffee, grains, etc.), rather than the parent plant (most fruits and vegetables, as well as roots and tubers).

But the super-sweet corn varieties depend on some bizarre, recessive traits that get really screwy with cross-pollination, whereas for most other seed crops, the alterations in the quality of F[sub]1[/sub] seed caused by cross-pollination are far more subtle.

F[sub]0[/sub] is the plant, its roots and its fruit; F[sub]1[/sub] is the seed. The corn cob is F[sub]0[/sub]; the corn kernels are F[sub]1[/sub].

All vendors of seed for super-sweet corn varieties emphasize that cross-pollination may lead to "unsatisfactory" results.

Bob

 

[skychaser]

I grew Yukon King for sustainable seed co a few years back....

Correction: It was called Yukon Chief.

https://sustainableseedco.com/products/yukon-chief-sweet-corn

Yukon Chief Sweet Corn

55-70 days, 1/2 OZ ~90 seeds

"Developed in 1958 by the University of Alaska. Yukon Chief sweet Corn is cold resistant and early maturing making it a perfect for colder mountain or coastal climates.
Yukon Chief grow about three to four feet high, producing slightly tapered yellow 4-7 inch ears with 12 rows of kernals. Plants produce about two to three ears per plant. Can produce as many as 6 ears on multiple tillers for each plant. This corn would be great for gardening in small spaces or containers. This corn would make a great addition to a school garden or for gardening with children."

 

[skychaser]

..."F0 is the plant, its roots and its fruit; F1 is the seed. The corn cob is F0; the corn kernels are F1."...

hmmm... Very interesting. Just when I thought I knew it all. I do tend to think of things only from the propagators point of view.

So if I am understanding you correctly... Lets use a plant family we all know and love, the nicotiana's, as an example. Say I were to cross a Tobacum with a Rustica, two plants I know to have different sized seed. Tobacum has very tiny seed that easily goes through a 600 micron screen. Rustica seed is too large to pass through.

In a cross I would observe my pods developing normally on the parent plant, (the cob and husk on corn) but the seed inside my pods may mature to an observable physical difference in size, possibly half way between a Tobacum and Rustica. Many other genetic traits of the resulting cross would be waiting to come out in the F1 generation, but there would be an observable physical effect in the seed itself.

That makes perfect sense after giving it some thought.

 

[deluxestogie]

I believe that, conceptually, you are correct about the N. tabacum x N. rustica cross, if it succeeded at all. Where it gets murky is that they are different species. Some of their genes may not pair up properly. Tutu is attempting to do the cross, and may be able to answer that interesting question about seed size.

With super-sweet corn, it's murky already, because all of them are F[sub]1[/sub] hybrids to begin with, and will never breed true to the parent, regardless of the source of pollen. But apparently the sweetness, which exists only as a homozygous recessive trait, is always maintained when self-fertilized. With cross-pollination, you end up with dent corn (ordinary field corn) sweetness.

I think it's a minor fraud to market super-sweet F[sub]1[/sub] corn seed to suburban growers. A much better choice for suburbia would be an heirloom sweet variety that does not depend on a recessive trait for its sweetness.

With my pipe cob corn, I wondered the extent to which crossed kernels would, by their growth pattern, influence the ultimate width of the host cob (my only objective in the grow). I still don't know the answer to that. Of the giant corn varieties that I grew, I carefully self-pollinated two of each variety, but all of those cobs produced kernels only over a portion of their length, so those cobs were not particularly robust.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I had read that about the SH2 corn. I still thought it a safe bet because there's a difference in having fields of it separated by 500' or two miles, or whatever, and a little patch here, and another a block away, downwind, nestled behind a garage, surrounded by 6' fences, etc.

I guess we'll see if the ears develop properly. If they fail to mature, it's probably because the soil temperature is too low, according to what I read.

 

[deluxestogie]

The pollination issue is certainly not responsible for poor growth of the plant. Worse case with pollination problems is normal height plants with ears that appear, but don't develop. Any neighbors using herbicides?

Bob

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

This was a question on Jeopardy. "There are fifteen nations or states whose name ends with ...stan. Name five of them." Not an easy thing to do in the quick time frame allowed on Jeopardy.

After viewing that program I went further and looked up the origin of the names that end in ...stan. It turns out that ...stan comes from any nation or state that speaks a Turkic language. Turkic is believed to have first been developed about 2,500 years ago.

No one ever gets my jokes.

Okay, here's an even harder one. You have to know the basics of Nuclear Physics.

Tritium was talking to her friend one day, and said "You know how I've been complaining about feeling tired and bloated lately?

"Yes", her friend said cautiously.

"Well", Tritium said, "I went to see the doctor about that, and imagine my surprise when he said I was pregnant with twins."

"My" her friend said concernedly.

Tritium continued, "and I know it was that damn Carbon 14 that did it to me!"

Wes H.

Tobacco grower and purveyor of obscure (nerdly) humor.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

The pollination issue is certainly not responsible for poor growth of the plant. Worse case with pollination problems is normal height plants with ears that appear, but don't develop. Any neighbors using herbicides?

Bob

Definitely not. The neighbors hardly cut their grass. I think what I'll do is run a black painted frame around them on the north, east and west sides to up the soil temperature.

 

[deluxestogie]

...up the soil temperature.

Probably way too late for that to be worth any effort this season. You might try a different location next year (like Nebraska).

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Probably way too late for that to be worth any effort this season. You might try a different location next year (like Nebraska).

Bob

What if I re-roof the garage, and what's the word, make it a cultivatable roof?

 

[deluxestogie]

News Flash!
Local farmer falls off cornfield, fracturing his collar bone.

Bob

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

Photos from today.



Photo 1, My one squash plant that might actually produce some fruit. The leaves are bigger around than the top of a 5 gallon bucket. Very rapid growth going on.

Photo 2, While strictly not from the veggie garden, this is about 10 cups of freshly ground Hard Red Winter Wheat that is about to be made into bread. And yes, grinding wheat makes a mess in the kitchen. Flour powder everywhere. But the taste of bread made with fresh-ground flour makes up for it, and, I 'gotta clean the counter tops anyway.

Wes H.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Heck yes. Save a slice for me!

 

[deluxestogie]

Hard Red Winter Wheat that is about to be made into bread.

What color is the inside of a loaf?

Bob

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

Medium brown. You are starting with red wheat, that will automatically give the finished product a brownish color. All of the bread wheats are red wheats. White wheat is for pastries and certain kinds of noodles (Think: Ramen noodles) I use brown sugar instead of white. Which will darken the color of the finished product. I've always preferred brown sugar for its flavor. Since you are already making brown bread, no biggie. If I were to make white bread, adding brown sugar would make it a funny color. Not quite what white bread should look like. Personally, I don't care for pasty white bread. But I have made it for my brother.



Photo of last of last Sundays loaf. Made with commercial flour.

This new batch should very similar in color and texture to the photo.

Also, part of what gives brown bread its brown color is the presence of the bran. (outer seed coat on the kernel) The millers remove all the bran when making white flour. The bran of course is nearly all of the fiber in a wheat kernel. About 8% of the total. The rest is protein (germ) and starch (endosperm). Also, pasta noodles are made from Durum wheat that is mostly grown in Eastern Montana and the Dakotas. Durum is an older more primitive wheat that has only 2/3rds of the chromosomes as the modern varieties (Tetraploid vs. Hexaploid). As I've said in the past, I know a lot about wheat. I went to a land-grant University, and got a B.S. Degree in Agriculture. Tobacco however, is a whole new and different can of worms. To put it mildly.

Wes H.

 

[deluxestogie]

I never thought of Durum wheat as a different species. My quick glance at Wikipedia highlights my ignorance about wheat. (Let's see...there's Wonder Bread and then there's biscuits and gravy...)

Pretty wild genetics there.

Bob