As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
When I started on this heirloom food quest in the search for non frankenfood corns, there was a reality of the always experts providing choices which grew "down south" or Johnny's Select Seeds with the Nothstine yellow dent which had low yields and that was it.
The great fixation of all was Reid's Yellow Dent........a long season corn in which the stocks did not stand up to wind, which makes harvest a trial.
Then there are frauds like the Obama lovers at Seed Savers or that Jerry Gettle who either have seeds too expensive to buy or they are into marketing and do not care their seed sources are not legitimate in the varieties are wrong, to Glenn Drowns who has too much stuff and his corn takes 3 years to grow out, with wrong corn kernel color appearing.
So my beginning was this white corn, that grew 12 feet off the ground, was too long season and had ears six feet of the ground. The husk though would have made nice toilet paper...but it was a trial as was Bloody Butcher, the beautiful red corn, to have too wet of ears yet in October when I would be getting snow.
I still look through Glenn Drowns products and I love reading his varieties, but when I sift through them, the latest was some natural hybrid based on popcorn so it would not cross as readily with dent corn, and it was like Painted Mountain in an Illinois Funk Brothers mass genetic hybrid, and nothing like the purity of Oscar Will taking 20 years to bring a Squaw Corn to the heights of Dakota White Flint in 4 inch ratty ears of multi colors to 8 inch long beautiful white ears.
There was not an internet when I was a child to research things or have contact. That was the problem, as I had no idea USDA existed in a seed bank, and I did not have access to a site like archive.org where people have taken the time to scan hundreds of old seed catalogues from the 1900's to look through.
In the above screen grab, are the varieties which built America. Names are lovely things, because names are the things in which you can contact state agricultural colleges if they have seed banks to start out with 50 seeds to fill acres.
Every corn variety I have in bags of seeds now, ready for my land from God to transform into bushels and not buckets, started out with 50 seeds, which I gaurded like a mother hen.
I NEVER planted all of my seeds as bad things can happen, but I planted and the results are wonderful when God does His job in blessing.
1 corn seed in a good ear, will produce over 400 seeds in increase. So the success of 4 short rows of 40 plants will give 1600 seeds for the next season in a greater patch, which increased genetics and goes into acre size plantings.
That is how all of the people in the early seed industry did it. Funks provide records of tracing 1 ear of corn as a parent, and then listing the best ears as offspring to test the production in various years.
That is how I do it as I enjoy it. I look through every ear. Sort through them, and only the best become parentage. The rest are secondary shellings which are back up to test later.
These though are the varieties which surpassed all the new wonders of hybrids, Reid's Yellow Dent or Nebraska. There actually were entire main stand varieties which were 85 day short season corn which did very well.....and they were yellow corn which matches the modern bias.
Early Yellow Wisconsin #8
Minnnesota 13 (I would add Minnesota 23 is a short season variety developed there.)
White Cap Extra Early
King of the Earliest
PRIDE OF THE NORTH (This is the standard short season variety which already exists.)
Golden Glow Wisconsin #12
Golden Row
Golden Rod
Leaming (This is a southern corn which most modern hybrids have as genetic material.)
For white corn, Silver King is listed, but Rustler surpasses in early corns and in drought.
I will not list the flint corns, because many like Dakota White, King Phillip are known and early, and this is not about flint corns.
The point is, in the old catalogues are the names of the corns which were being produced, which had strong stalks, produced well, handled drought and disease, and were all in that 50 to 60 bushel corn, which can be improved on with fertilizers and making them your landrace or a local variety through your natural selection.
It is the thing which gripes me in all of this, in all corn is now produced basically in Iowa, as the earlier varieties like Funks and DeKalb were in Illinois. Those are high humid, high heat index areas, and they do not transfer to other areas as well.
Granted Oscar Will was in the Missouri Valley by Bismark as Gurneys was in the same valley by Yankton so the soils were better than some sodbuster out in Indian country, but at least the high winds and arid conditions made that corn a better choice.
Simply put, you can put a dry corn into wet conditions and it will do better, but you put a wet corn into dry conditions and it looks horrid.
The genetics are already there, and one of the things when I have a few moments, I am on the USDA sites reading the descriptions on corn in oil content, size, days to tassle etc... If you are raising corn to feed your chickens, you do not need 300 bushel or 150 bushel production corn. Even if you are in need of immense profit, the structure is there with less costs in the heirlooms in the 100 bushel range, of being able to make a profit.
I had a severe drought starting this year, and put in some old Rustler on a hill. I watered the plants twice and I just checked them today in that 6 foot corn is over 8 feet tall. Most of the corn I am dealing with has a height 2 feet over what it should. That is just water and natural soil richness.
I do not have the dog hair plantings or leaves, because my old corn is doing what it is supposed to in putting everything into the corn on the cob, and not fodder to eat up all that expensive fertilizer the conglomerates sell.
I know if I ever get to the land and the point of selling this, I am going to have to make people who buy my seed sign a no resale form, or I am going to have some ass plant acres of it, thinking they are going to get rich off of my work. That is not going to happen, because the yellow dent varieties I am working on, do not exist for sale anywhere, like the varieties above, because those involved in this are all shiftless brain dead types who do a great deal of "green talking", but are the same swindlers who went bankrupt two generations before.
I have now given you the names. I have told you where to look and how to research, and what will be expected if you find your seed, in you will be given 50 to 100 seeds, and it will take you years to get your field of corn, but it will be your corn and it will be a corn which will produce, because it produced over 100 years ago when people depended upon it for their lives.
No excuses for starving. If you want sweet corn, there are nice varieties of them too, and interesting thing is chickens and cows eat that too in your surplus.
I have tried some like Golden Glow and it did not produce well here nor did Minnesota 13. That is what planting things and getting things sorted out is all about before meteors start falling.
Nuff Said
agtG
