Montana Morado Maize

[William Schlegel]

https://www.northfrontierfarms.com/shop

Dave Christiansen and Ole Norgaard have released Dave's purple corn.

Dave Christiansen bred painted mountain corn. The corn Carol Deppe used to breed her OSSI flour corns.

When I was a kid I used to drool over the painted mountain corn add in the garden city seeds catalogue. Got seed in highschool in the 90s and it has been a few years since I grew it out but still have seed for it.

[William Schlegel]

Got my packet. It says on the back it is a sister line to painted mountain. That implies you could grow it in a block of the same large field and not worry too much about cross pollination.

I would also say you could take that concept further and grow all painted mountain derived flour corns in blocks in the same large field. Including Carol Deppes manna series, papas red, white, blue, montana cudu corn. Could also use similar flour corns in the same block design. Josephs, and old varieties like the Arikara white I have some seed for. Might be how I use it.

[reed]

Got my packet. It says on the back it is a sister line to painted mountain. That implies you could grow it in a block of the same large field and not worry too much about cross pollination.

I would also say you could take that concept further and grow all painted mountain derived flour corns in blocks in the same large field. Including Carol Deppes manna series, papas red, white, blue, montana cudu corn. Could also use similar flour corns in the same block. Josephs, and old varieties like the Arikara white I have some seed for. Might be how I use it.

I don't know, that may not be the case in this situation. That is if you want to keep the Morado, Morado. I think the reason it took Dave a good bit to release Montana Morado is probably because it took a good bit to distill that trait into a stable line. Actually, also with Carol's manna series you might what to keep it away from Painted Mountain. They both worked hard to isolate those specific traits from Painted Mountain, mixing it back in would just reverse that work.

That's fine if a diverse landrace flour corn is what your after but I don't think there is anything in those varieties than isn't also already in Painted Mountain, they are subsets of a set. So, you might get the same eventual result just using Painted Mountain.

[William Schlegel]

Depends on the block size. I.E. the block size needs to be large and you need to only save seed from the center of each block. Cause it definitely would need to be an entire garden for each sister variety. Edge of block seed could be the start of a new breeding project! When Carol wrote about the technique I believe she explicitly referenced the book Buffalo Bird Woman's garden. Block sizes need to be large for it to work. Also a row of sunflowers and some squash in between wouldn't hurt! I would reccomend looking at the diagram on garden size in Buffalo Bird Womans garden if you are someone serious about using the technique.

Definitely possible though. I would pay more attention to seed isolation between different types. Though the three tribes of the upper Missouri managed to maintain flint, flour, and sweet. Also there are lots of varieties from native seed search with a mix of kernel types so things getting mixed up in corn isn't a total deal breaker.

This year I grew separate patches on the same eight acres of flint, flour, and sweet. Next year I may do the same but two flours and a sweet. It seemed to work fine for my purposes.

[William Schlegel]

I think the reason Dave Christianson took so long to release Montana Morado is because he was trying to find ways to make a little money off of it for awhile. They tried selling some proprietary type corn bread mix etc for quite a few years first.

I think what finally convinced them to release it is this:

https://www.rareseeds.com/montana-morado-corn?gclid=Cj0KCQiA47GNBhDrARIsAKfZ2rCH_OPVfFvGM8S-Dy6WYXkROkbVeGOV_WoksA68z8birKOS6U0AMHAaAk54EALw_wcB

Ed Schultz a Bozeman MT area corn breeder who has previously released Papas Blue, Papas White, Papas Red, and Montana Cudu corns has released Mountain Morado bred from dark blue selected kernels from Painted Mountain.

I don't know for a fact but my best guess is that forced Dave's hand.

One problem with open source plant breeding is that there is no money in it. I've heard other older breeders like Tom the fancy tomato fellow have similar hopes of getting paid something for their work. Understandable.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Could also use similar flour corns in the same block. Josephs, and old varieties like the Arikara white I have some seed for. Might be how I use it.

Painted Mountain was a very minor ancestor to my corn landraces (less than 1%). My flour corn bears little resemblance to the lines derived from Painted Mountain. Mixing my flour corn with Painted Mountain lines would mess with the thin, 8 row cobs that aid in quick dry down. The growing season of my corn is months longer than Painted Mountain. My flour corn is resistant to skunks, coons, and pheasants. Painted Mountain could use a good dose of anti-predation genetics.

50% of the genetics of my flour corn are from the Caribbean, and South America.

[William Schlegel]

Not talking about mixing, rather talking about using large blocks to maintain multiple varieties.

I would have to say after growing Montana bred painted mountain it performs very well in MT. Very practical corn here; I think we need corns adjusted to latitude.

In 2017 I grew Arikara, Lofthouse, my own blue flour corn segregate of painted mountain, and papa's blue together in a design that should have led to pretty high crossing between adjacent rows and crossing while present was pretty minimal. There was hardly any blue in the Arikara and Lofthouse at the end. Keeping the three sorts separate would definitely be manageable in large blocks here in my valley. Another consideration is length of season varieties with at least a 15-day difference in season length can be kept separate side by side. So if you planted blocks of different varieties of corn you could separate something like 60-day Gaspe Flint, 85 day painted mountain, and 100? Day Lofthouse just pretty much side by side. You could also put a block of say 60-day Gaspe flint between two painted mountain derivatives and separate them a bit more if you wanted to grow a lot of corn like Carol does in order to eat with her celiac disease.

Yet another consideration is color. Blocks of white in between colored corns might be a good way to go. Corn is fun because a lot of crosses show up via color on the first year. So a blue corn next to a white is pretty easily to keep separate manually.

Though if you like to eat wheat and other small grains those could also space small corn fields. I'd like to grow more small grains, but I've been kind of taking a break from fighting the Hungarian partridge for it.

Corn seed also lives a long time in my climate. Not sure what the limit is but I think five years is fine. So you can separate corns in time as well as space just by rotating years.

[reed]

In my garden Painted Mountain as well as Carol's manna series and some but certainly not all of Joseph's landraces tend to mature very quickly and at only four feet tall or so. I think that might be because it doesn't cool off at night here, so they get their GGD too fast. Biggest issue though was the ears tend to overshoot the husks resulting in bad problems with bugs and molds.

The flint and sweet from your folk's neighborhood do fine but the flour varieties just don't like it here. They don't overshoot the husks and they grow to normal size. I have little clue why they are not affected by the GGD like the flour is.  Assuming I'm even correct about that. Carol's Cascade flints also mature fast on short plants, but the ears are fine.

[William Schlegel]

In my garden Painted Mountain as well as Carol's manna series and some but certainly not all of Joseph's landraces tend to mature very quickly and at only four feet tall or so. I think that might be because it doesn't cool off at night here, so they get their GGD too fast. Biggest issue though was the ears tend to overshoot the husks resulting in bad problems with bugs and molds.

The flint and sweet from your folk's neighborhood do fine but the flour varieties just don't like it here. They don't overshoot the husks and they grow to normal size. I have little clue why they are not affected by the GGD like the flour is.  Assuming I'm even correct about that. Carol's Cascade flints also mature fast on short plants, but the ears are fine.

I used to try to improve my strain of painted mountain by saving seed only from husks that nicely and tightly wrapped the kernels. Even here some stick out of the husks and get yucky.