How to grow corn and squash for seed

Rowen White talks about corn and squash seed keeping in episode 5 of The Seed Growers Podcast.

Here are some of the highlights of the corn conversation:

• Isolating corn in time and space to avoid cross pollination

• Differences in growing corn for stock seed vs bulk seed

• Evaluating small corn lots to evaluate if varieties need more genetic diverity

• Population crosses of similar varieties to broaden genetic diversity

• Selecting corn throughout the growing season

• When corn is ready to harvest

• Stewarding corn to maintain diversity in an ever changing world

And the squash conversation

• Growing different squash species that don’t cross with each other

• Creating modern grexes to create really diverse breeding pools – specifically for Kabocha squash. 

• Splitting squash by hatchet to extract the seed

• Fermenting squash seed to make seed cleaning easier

• Water winnowing squash seed

• Selecting squash at home in the kitchen

Germination rates and dormancy

Go and listen to the full episode to get all the details!

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You can listen on

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Or use this RSS feed to subscribe in your podcast player of choice: https://feeds.libsyn.com/412058/rss

The Seed Growers podcast is produced in part by No-Till Growers with the help of the show’s sponsors The Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security and The Organic Seed Alliance