Evaluating and storing corn seed.

Pictured above are from top to bottom: New blue clamp down barrels for long term, waterproof seed storage. Until we get a new root cellar/storm shelter built this fall/next spring two of these with large duplicate samples of our new varieties and some of the rarer Open Pollinated types will find their way into the ground for long term seed storage.

Second: drought stressed and low fertility stressed, but viable and incredibly diverse Astronomy Domine sweet corn

Third: Amanda Palmer (early variant) seed ears. Shelled these off for seed earlier today, got a huge blister on my thumb as a reward as well as about 20 lbs of seed. Two more later variant patches and a pure UK tuxpeno patch still are standing waiting to be evaluated for seed and harvested for turkey feed stored in the new corn crib.

Still wanting to trade corns, read posts below this one for the downlow.

Searching for heirloom collards....

Collards are one of our favorite survival foods here on the farm. We tend to love brassica crops in general, but collards have a special place in our heart on those cold winter days when nothing else is growing. This year we are growing out a mass cross of many types of heirloom and F1 collards, however, much like jello, there is always room. That said I came accross this excellent ARS article about collecting Carolina heirloom/landrace collards: http://afrsweb.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/apr08/collard0408.htm?pf=1

Unfortunately those accessions don't yet seem to be available. Perhaps some of you out there have some other lesser known collard accession and we could facilitate a trade? E-mail: bishopshomegrown@gmail.com

Absinthe Melon: Crop Profile

Absinthe Melon: Crop Profile
Crop Type: Muskmelon
Breeder: Alan Bishop/Hip-Gnosis Seed Development/Bishop’s Homegrown
Breeding Method: Mass Cross, Composite, Genepool, Landrace
Objectives:
- Produce a high yielding vine bearing melons of exceptionally high quality under adverse conditions
- 1-5 pound, single serving, highly netted
- Powdery Mildew and Cucumber Beetle tolerance
- Drought and Low Fertility Tolerance
- High sugar content

Parents: Green Machine, Green Nutmeg, Rocky Ford (Eden’s Gem), Jenny Lind, Various numbered lines from gene banks, occasional contributions from orange fleshed muskmelons, honeydews, and true Cantaloupes. Also: Long Island Seed Project contributions and PMR 51

F4 Generation.

Comments: I have introgresed many lines into this particular gene pool over the past four years, selecting on productivity and taste as well as tolerance to low water intake and powdery mildew as well as cucumber beetles. Yearly we grow out between 50-100 plants to select from and taste plays heavily into the selection criteria. Very diverse population generally ripens much earlier than orange fleshed varieties and with much lower inputs. Generally short vines, very rarely rambling in type.

An excellent blog.

Anyone who has spent some time on the blog or over at Homegrown Goodness knows about my reverence of Native American agriculture, particularly Southwestern agriculture. Recently I stumbled across an excellent blog that deals quite a lot with placing a timeframe on the earliest agricultural efforts at Chaco canyon and in some recent posts has addressed the turkey issue. If you have a chance, check out Gamblers House here: http://gamblershouse.wordpress.com

Now Trading.....

1. Lb. of Amanda Palmer Corn
or
1. lb. of Astronomy Domine sweet corn
or
1. lb. of UK Tuxpeno corn

for any of the following:

1. lb. of floriani red flint
1. lb. of rhode island white cap flint
1. lb. painted mountain corn
1. lb. of bear island corn
1. lb of Roys Calais corn
or any quantity over one ounce (viable, at least 30 ear population selection) of any type or types of Waxy or Glutinous corn. Would also trade for flour corns with great lodging resistance, less tillering, and at least 6-7 feet tall and productive.

Thanks,
Alan

What was I doing on those 100 degree days?

Building a corn crib! Or, should I say, rebuilding one that Kims father (Dale Ratts) and I took apart and moved here. I honestly don't know what was more of a pain in the ass, taking it down which involved grinding all of the nuts off of the two main seams with a cutting wheel on a grinder (which proceeded to give me an sinus infection which put me down for a week in the spring) and driving it home on a trailer that was two sizes too small, or putting it back up, realizing how little leway there was for rebuilding it given it wasn't built quite straight in the first place and was bowed from being unlevel. It was one thing to get the walls up, quite another to make the roof work just right while also smoldering in the oven that is the walls of this behemouth on a one hundred degree plus couple of days! Either way, I have a corn crib, and if your going to be a corn breeder or a sustainable turkey farmer/breeder you have to have one! I should easily be able to accomidate 500 bushel here.


I've also been spending a lot of time hand harvesting the Tuxpeno/Southern Dent component of the new Amanda Palmer synthetic/composite/landrace corn(s). Last Friday I hand harvested close to an acre of this valuable new genepoos which will undoubtably give rise to several new, interesting, and useful lines, both for human and animal consumption. The tuxpeno components matured and dried down the quickest of all with lots and lots of genetic diversity including tuxpeno, semi-dent, semi-flint, dent, and flint variations and lots of colors.

Harvesting and shucking by hand as I walk down the rows is quite an experience, the knowledge gained cannot be underestimated even given the heat and humidity. Doing this work by hand puts me back in touch with the earth and gives me a whole new respect for the entity that is corn and the uniqe symbosis that exists between corn and humans and the role that corn and other grains have played in our 10,000 years of agricultural civilization. This also gives me an opporotunity to test every plant in the plot for agronomic traits I might miss by using a corn picker or having my crop combined. I litterally touched and tested and observed every plant in the field and every kernal on the cobs, looking for those traits which would lend it most easily to self sustainable organic agriculture; drought tolerance, standability, production, and more. The seed was planted exceptionally early this year on April 5'th in cold and wet conditions, the stands were full giving me access to a plethora of traits for cool/wet soil germination and tolerance, it also survived at least two frosts early in the season. This also gives the opporotunity to eliminate any molds or fungus from the corn crib prior to it's introduction to that important cache of feed and seed. It would be my guess that the value of the gnosis (knowledge) gained in this intensive environment would have to be equal to 10 years of harvesting and open pollinated corn by way of a picker (and making mass selection from a corn crib) or a lifetime of growing F1 hybrids or gmo's and harvesting via combine. Did I mention we also hand planted it and hand side dressed it with turkey compost which we hand turned on the farm? It doesn't get any more intensive or sustainable than that! The seed that doesn't make the cut now becomes animal feed and the cobs become bedding for the turkey coops. There are still two acres of corn left to harvest. Those ears in the floor of the corn crib are secondary yellow ears of Astronomy Domine as I have not yet got a picture up of the first haul of "feed" corn that is currently drying in the crib, those hung on the wall are "Amanda Palmer" seed donors which meet my expectations, mind you, only from one of the three interbreeding plots.

Next year we will persue both seed to row breeding plots and further mass selection, some of the flint derrivitives will be frozen for future research into sustainable flint lines.

I personally feel that the genetics preserved in these stocks are more than adequate to develop germplasm adaptable to global warming (whether man made or natural) or global cooling. As well we will be making selection based on taste in polenta, grits, flour, parching and more but the ultimate use of this corn as an adaptavar feed for our turkeys.

This particular genepool is made up of a number of corn parents, mostly southern dents and northeastern flints but also a very valuable day length neutral lowlan tuxpeno variety. Bloody Butcher, Reids Yellow Dent, Lancaster Surecrop, Cherokee White Eagle, Daemon Morgans Butcher, Boone County White, Johnson County White, Hickory King Yellow, and UK Tuxpeno make up the majority of the pollen contributions.

Seed will be available this fall via the Face Of The Earth Seed CSA and we will update photos and info as we continue to harvest into the fall.

"Astronomy Domine" Year 5 variations.

Here you can see some particularly interesting new variation in the Astronomy Domine landrace as it enters it's fifth year. As time allows I will compile a new pedigree for this composite as it has grown substantially since I last published one, we are now up amongst 170 varieties and counting with some new germplasm added this past season including old OP varieties from Native Seeds/SEARCH, Gatersleben, Dan and Val Mcmurray, ARS GRIN, and some modern SE and SE+ varieties.

The smaller squat ears are from an experimental plot planted sans any type of fertilizer on the worst piece of ground on the farm, nearly all heavy red clay, with no irrigation (the Cheese Pumpkin and Seminole X Cheese crosses were planted here and in the same way as well). The seed was planed April 1'st and survived flooding, frost, cold and wet soil, dry soil and several days of extrodinarily high temperatures for our region. The plants were stunted and all were less that 5 feet tall with many topping out at around three feet! Despite these obsitcles we were able to get many plants to produce one and sometimes two smallish ears which give us access to a suite of diverse genes which we feel will strengthen the overall genepool of the end product with some astounding tolerances.

Oh yeah, notice those green kernels? :) Getting there! Make no mistake about the diversity of those small ears though, I guarantee you there is more diversity here in this picture alone than in all of the holdings of sweet corn attributable to Seed Savers Exchange. Survival food at it's best.

The large yellow ears are from another low fertility plot and were contirbuted by the cross of Astronomy Domine to Incredible, NK199, Bodacious, and a couple of other modern yellow sweet types. The one cylandrical "perfect" ear will become a breeding plot of it's own next season, others will be bulked with seed from the previous two seasons, contributors sending seed back and the fresh harvest from the many other plots this season. Seed will be available through the Face Of The Earth Seed CSA.