il Fri, 05 Mar 2004 20:24:31 GMT, Ross Reid ha scritto:

[snip other posters]
I have to disagree with your disagreement ;-).
Breaking a portion off a cob will leave the exposed end of the cob
portion left on the stalk open to all sorts of molds and/or bacterial
infection.
A more practical way would be to eat some whole cobs and leave some
others on the plant to dry. However, there will still be several
caveats, e.g. this will only work with a non-hybrid, open pollinated
sweet corn. Plus, since corn is wind pollinated, unless there is no
other variety of sweet corn within a minimum of 1 mile of the stuff
you want to save, it'll be a crap shoot as to what characteristics the
corn from your saved seeds will have. You could easily eat some of the
cobs of corn you have grown and find them delicious so you let some
cobs remain on the plant to dry for seed. Depending on what pollen
fertilized your original cobs, after all your work of saving and
planting, you could have altogether different tasting corn. This is
particularly true in an area like the one in which I live, where corn
is a very popular cash crop and there are thousands of acres of many
different varieties grown.
At least, if Loki attempts saving his/her own corn seed, it will be an
interesting learning experience.

Ross

Which is why I have a nice tall row of jerusalem artichokes as a wind
barrier. ( I hope.) However the several gales we have had may've
brought more pollen through. I have plain yellow corn that I'm trying
to maintain, as I don't want that sweet yellow and white one. My
neighbour's corn is all dead and brown while mine are still growing,
so hopefully the pollen times didn't match. It's now autumn so I'm
hoping they can keep growing long enough to mature before it gets too
cold. I've still got seeds from last year anyway. Next time I may
even get to plant them earlier. hah!

--
Cheers,
Loki [ Brevity is the soul of wit. W.Shakespeare ]