Strange corn

Richard G. · Sep 2, 2012

We have planted this "Indian" corn for years to give to friends in the fall. Never seen this pattern like this on the 2 ears on the left.
Anyone seen this before?
Richard in NW SC

Bob Bancroft · Sep 2, 2012

Field or sweet corn nearby?
This strange year brought out lots of strange issues- pollination being one.

old · Sep 2, 2012

Hey at least your corn grew. I planted Indian corn this year and it did not even come up but it was to dry for it I guess or the seed I got was bad. Wife told me no sweet corn this year since we have a good bit still in the freezer so figured I would do the Indian corn but guess I figured wrong

RalphWD45 · Sep 2, 2012

Thats exactly what I suspect Bob! I have seen cross polination in my indian blue corn, and it looked simular. After that , in 2 yrs I had lost most of the Blue color, and quit replanting.

JDseller · Sep 2, 2012

You had some yellow corn (sweet or field) near by that pollinated first. So the bottom half of the far left corn got the yellow pollen. Then your Indian corn pollinated and it finished the rest.

The other little ear more than likely was pollinating when it was real hot. It has some of the Indian corn pollen and then finished with the yellow corn pollen. Indian corn is not a real good pollen producing corn. It will get over whelmed by regular corn if it is close.

Just a tip. A good friend grows a lot of Indian corn. He sells it to several large chains. He always makes sure his Indian corn is well away from any other corn so it does not get cross pollinated by field corn.

If you are growing it in a garden then you will have trouble with it cross pollinating.

RBnSC · Sep 3, 2012

Richard,
We planted Indian corn 2 years ago mostly because the seed was free from a cousin of ours and we had an Idea that we could plant only the dark colors for a customer that had a special purpose. We hand picked the seed mostly the purple and planted about 10 acres down near Orangeburg SC. It came out all kinds of colors beautiful really,and then we found out the local grain buyers weren't interested so we had to bag it all and sell as deer corn.Which we didn't have any trouble as the deer seem to like it better or at least we had no complaints. The thing about deer corn is you have to get cash money up front because they are so bad about lying and stealing. Just ask Old..

Ron

Strange corn

Richard G.

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Bob Bancroft

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old

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RalphWD45

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JDseller

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RBnSC

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