A few years ago I started a project crossing different heirloom sweetcorn varieties working towards a landrace variety adapted to my area. So far I have mainly just let the plants cross and have only selected for whatever survives best.
My question is, how would you select for flavor in a project like this? (When the seeds are the part you are eating) Is it even possible? Would you just have to wait until you have a grex or landrace population before you might be able to select out flavor based on similarities in looks or growth?
"Despite all our accomplishments we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."
Most sweet corns I know will develop two full sized ears if it's not too crowded. (Some corn genes will produce more than that. I think Joseph Lofthouse had a stalk with sixteen ears. Called it a corn bush.) I think you could take one of the ears for eating and leave the other for seed. You'd need to taste in the patch, or only harvest and taste from one stalk at a time, or mark the ears and the stalks they came from, in order to know which stalks to mark for seed saving.
I tried cutting off about half the ear and leaving the rest to dry. Wasn't a good fit in my garden. Mostly came out black, mildewy and bug eaten. Very little seed (that I was willing to save or share) came from it.
There are about 300 seeds on a cob of corn. I only need about 7 from each cob for replanting. That gives me a few hundred seeds for tasting.
With sweet corn, it is common for me to taste the cobs when they are mostly dried down. They might not be the freshest/sweetest corn of the year, but they often taste amazing long after their prime. And plants that are too fibrous, or that have funky flavors are easily noticed. I harvest the average ears into a bulk bin, and the amazing ears into a separate bin. I mostly replant amazing, with a good dose of average for the sake of maintaining diversity.
Another thing I do with sweet corn is take my hand pruners to the field, on prime harvest days, and cut off an inch long section of cob, and taste it. I can taste the same cob multiple times. If I really like the flavor of something, I mark it with a ribbon. I don't have to worry about cobs molding in my arid climate.
Sweet corn seeds are viable about a week before the earliest fresh eating stage, so they could be harvested at the normal time, and tasted, with the best being set aside as seed.
I also taste dried seeds. For example, when I was growing popcorn, I would pop 20 kernels from each cob to evaluate flavor and popping ability.
Sweet corn seeds are viable about a week before the earliest fresh eating stage, so they could be harvested at the normal time, and tasted, with the best being set aside as seed.
So you harvest it at the eating stage, taste it, and then let the cob/seed dry off the stalk? If so this is extremely helpful. I thought corn had to be allowed to dry on the stalk to save the seed. I had beautiful large ears this year and they were all lost to the squirrels. Probably could have beat the squirrels if i had known!
"Despite all our accomplishments we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."
Joseph Lofthouse
author & steward
Posts: 7364
Location: Cache Valley, zone 4b, Irrigated, 9" rain in badlands.
I harvest corn for seed long before it has dried down in the field. Then dry it indoors on mesh shelving with a fan blowing on it.
Some of the mega seed companies harvest sweet corn seed at about 17 days after pollination. Earliest fresh eating stage is about 25 days. I don't really start to enjoy sweet corn until about 32 days. I typically harvest seed at about 45 days. Harvest date for my corn has more to do with frost than anything else. Whatever stage it's at the day before a hard frost is expected is when it gets harvested. The day before squirrels start eating it would be another wonderful harvest date.
If the husks are turning slightly tan on the tips, that's about when the seed stops any further development.
I taste every cob when I harvest it, even if it's long past the fresh eating stage. One of my selection criteria is for corn that tastes great, even if picking is delayed a month after the fresh eating stage.
I knaw on a few kernels of every cob of flour and flint corn that I pick. Sure, I damage the surrounding kernels, but that's what winnowing is for.
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