preventing cross pollination in corn

[Habitant]

Hi I want to grow and save dent corn and grow not but not save sweet corn in the same garden. Whats the easiest way to achieve this? If I plant all the dent corn now and then two weeks later and every two week after that plant sweet corn will that prevent cross fertilization?

Thanks.

[elmtree3]

It depends on the "Days to maturity". If you plant a 100 day dent corn now and an 85 day sweet corn in 2 weeks, they would be maturing at the same time..."cross-pollinating". Plus, if you have any other corn growing within a mile or so, and maturing at the same time, they "may" cross-pollinate. I think a better way to do this would be to use a technique where you bag the ears and the tassles. Then when they are ready, you shake the tassle(collecting the pollen), and shake it onto the now ubagged ears, then you rebag the ears eliminating any(or almost any) chance of it cross-pollinating with another corn. I've used this on popcorn with great results. I buy mine here:

Seed Savers Exchange - Bag, Corn Shoot

And here:

Seed Savers Exchange - Bag, Corn Tassle

[dirtman]

Elmtree 3 is correct. There is no other way to prevent corn from cross pollenating except to bag the ears you want to save. Not that big a deal considering you would probably only have to do a half a dozen ears to get a goodly amount of seed.

[tinknal]

You could also pull all the tassels on the sweet corn when they appear.

[hillbillytn]

plant sweet corn first wait 7 to 10 days then plant field corn.

[elmtree3]

Originally Posted by tinknal

You could also pull all the tassels on the sweet corn when they appear.

If you did this, you would only end up with a few kernals on your sweet corn, and it would have to be cross-pollinated by your dent corn, because that's how a corn cob forms its kernals....from being pollinated and forming the seed, or kernal. The corn has to be pollinated to get kernals. That's why you see cobs that aren't full. Each "strand" of the corn ear hair pollinates a single kernal, so when pollen doesn't reach a particular "hair", you end up with an empty spot on the cob. I usually cut a few tassles off my sweet corn and walk through the rows and tap pollen on the ears, to make sure thay all get pollen. I hope I wrote this understandably.

[Paquebot]

Originally Posted by tinknal

You could also pull all the tassels on the sweet corn when they appear.

At first glance, you're wrong if one wanted to save seed from both. Reading the opening thread a second time, you're 100% right. But, it need only apply if both the dent and sweet tasseled at the same time and they were grown close enough to allow the dent pollen to pollinate the sweet. If the two were separated by more than 10' or so, kernels on the sweet corn ears might be rather scarce without a lot of help from the winds.

Best advice is to determine maturity date of both the dent and sweet and plant accordingly. Dent types generally take a lot longer than sweet types. If both were started the same time, the sweet corn would be finished with its pollination before the dent tasseled out. Pollination period generally is 14 days maximum. If two varieties are 20 days difference, one is done before the other is receptive.

Martin