Another method is to just pick the ones from one year earlier.
Wow! Didn't know this. Many thanks for the info.
I can hear the wild pigs at night sometimes and I was imagining they were eating the acorns, but it could also be the mushrooms perhaps. Do squirrels eat them right away? Perhaps they store them away and only eat their nuts from the previous year? Need to look into that...
Many thanks again!
Thanks for the follow!
Now that I have your attention, can I interest you in joining my maize challenge 2022?
https://peakd.com/mc2022/@felixxx/1000-hbd-prizes-maize-challenge-2022
After watching much of hivefest I imagined you were referring to some kind of NFT project like hashkings! Happy to see you are in fact growing physical food :) And it is fortuitous that you should mention this plant in particular because we've had two seasons of healthy yet inedible maize which is a mystery I would very much like to get to the bottom of.
Is there not a difference between maize & corn? I seem to remember in the UK a lot of maize is grown but it is for the animals due to a tougher consistency which is less enjoyable than corn. I mention this because here in France there is only one word to describe these plants... "maïs".
So I bought some maize and I appear to be able to grow it quite successfully but as I mentioned, it is not soft and enjoyable at the end! And I am wondering if I am not growing maize for animals? Do you happen to know of a way to tell the difference?
In German it is 'Mais'... and 'Korn' means any kind of grain.
English is weird sometimes.
Yes there are different varieties and the one you think of is sweet corn.
Sweet corn has a certain mutation, which makes it sugary and juicy.
98% of maize is not the sweet, juicy kind; There are varieties for grinding into corn flour, for animal feed and some are best just for bio-fuel.
I will be growing Golden Bantam sweet corn, which is by far the most popular sweet variety.
Just by looking at a plant or a seed, I would not be able to tell whether it's sweet corn or popcorn genome, but the products are very different. (edit: thought about it some and could probably tell the seeds apart)
I do know that most South Americans and most Africans will not be growing sweet corn for my challenge. Most of them do not even seem to like sweet corn :D
...and all this is exactly why I want to see this challenge succeed - So much to learn from each other!
When I was a child, I would pick buckets full of acorns for a local type of zoo.
I was always disappointed to see the hogs go to town on the old, dark, rotten acorns instead of my clean, green, fresh ones.
It was only later when I got into survival skills that I realized, why they would do this.
Also: I am not an acorn connocieur, but I think there are quite some differences between the varieties.
Like you mention in the op: We lost some knowledge there. People back in the day knew these things.