I started with five cultivars this season for a polenta corn landrace:
Floriani Red, a polenta corn
Red Hogan
Manning Pride (this and the above are Australian cultivars)
Giant Indian Flint and
a yellow feed corn
Because of a very cool, wet start to the season these were planted late but they are producing some cobs. Rats have forced me to start the harvest early so they’re helping me select short season corns! It is a bit of a nuisance though. I try to leave the cobs as long as possible but to avoid feeding the rats the longest I dare leave them is when the visible silks are beginning to dry down. For some cobs this has been too early, for others it seems okay.
All the winter squash are in the corn patch so I’m keeping a weather eye on them too and harvesting as soon as the peduncle begins to dry down.
The teosinte I planted at one end of the corn patch tasseled after almost all the corn silked so I doubt it will have contributed anything. It is just beginning to silk itself and our first frost often comes in the last week of April. No idea how rapidly its fruit ripens. With any luck first frost won’t be until some time in May. Fingers crossed!
That’s interesting to hear you have problems with rats eating your corn. Do they climb up the stalks to get the ears?
I grew a bunch of different corns last year, tall, short, varieties with cobs 5ft on the stalks, and I had a lot of rats eating other crops like my watermelons, cantaloupe, rice, etc. but they did not touch the corn, even on shorter plants or plants that fell over.
Yes, but so far not cobs that are more than about 4ft up. Perhaps they don’t like feeling so exposed.
I grew my winter squash patch with the corn and that was quite dense so plenty of cover low down for them. The cat didn’t like being in among the squash so he didn’t hunt in that area. Next season, if I grow squash with the corn I’ll only plant the smaller varieties and not as dense but I think watermelon might be a better choice to allow the cat better access!
A sample of corn harvested. Most are from Floriani Red Flint. One, second from the right along the bottom, might be from the Giant Indian Flint. The left-most cob is either from Manning Pride or the yellow feed corn. This one is still a little soft as frost forced the rest of the harvest. There are a number of plants in the greenhouse drying down. If they have mature cobs they will all look like this one. The Red Hogan didn’t produce anything though it may have contributed some pollen.
The teosinte plants are also in the greenhouse drying down. They were very late to flower (?daylength sensitivity) but there is an outside chance of some fresh seed as seeds were forming when I cut the plants down.
Overall, it’s not a great haul but I’m thrilled to get even this much given the very poor season and the rats.
The landrace is on its way!
This is great to hear! It looks a bit like a landrace I started last year. Most of the cobs were incompletely pollinated but they produced more than enough seed for next year.
This is a fun project! I can’t wait to see what comes of it. I’m evolving into something similar, corn is so much easier to store than potatoes as a basic carbohydrate component to the diet. It’s also so pretty.
We didn’t do much to further the polenta project this season as it was too dry. The corn has to survive without irrigation. I did plant a few though just to get some fresh seed to add to the mix. I liked the height of some of the plants and the fact that they set cobs at around chest height. This architecture is something I want to encourage.
