Popcorn!

[greenthumbomaha]

Chris that is very pretty. My neighbor grows this on his farm and his glass gem has more dark jewel tones and fewer pinks, almost none your color. You said you had a small plot. Did you use just the pink tassels and hand pollinate?

I was at the farm today and he must have harvested this past week. Last year the ears were only about 6-8 inches and they were almost a foot this year. I haven't been over to see the colors yet. I'll find out how many plants her grows instead of guessing but its just for decoration.

- Lisa

[ChrisK]

No, I had three plants with the height I was looking for, chopped out all the others, and let the three open pollinate.

I'll probably do the same next year: I'll plant a block from the original stock of Glass Gem I have (~2 lbs of seed) plus the progeny from the selections this year. Remove the ones I don't like size wise and allow the remaining to open pollinate to get even more diversity of color and other traits (don't want to narrow this genetic pool down too much). Repeat this a number of times and I'll have a more uniform smaller stature Glass Gem open pollinated population (corn does not do well continuously inbreeding unlike tomatoes). We'll see how successful I am.

Originally Posted by greenthumbomaha

Chris that is very pretty. My neighbor grows this on his farm and his glass gem has more dark jewel tones and fewer pinks, almost none your color. You said you had a small plot. Did you use just the pink tassels and hand pollinate?

I was at the farm today and he must have harvested this past week. Last year the ears were only about 6-8 inches and they were almost a foot this year. I haven't been over to see the colors yet. I'll find out how many plants her grows instead of guessing but its just for decoration.

- Lisa

[yardn_gardn]

Originally Posted by gvozdika

From 6 Tom Thumb plants I had only one cob. The pollen was blown away by the time I needed it to pollinate the rest of the ears. Is it possible to store corn pollen?

Hello Gvozdika, I have asked a good authority about that very thing on storing pollen. He said all of his studies had no luck with keeping pollen viable for any extended period of time. Maybe someone else knows something about it. I hope so.

[gvozdika]

Thank you Dawn. If all goes well, I hope to try again next year. At least now I have plenty of seeds