I've heard a few variations on this.. was curious if anyone had any thoughts..
I've heard its ok to plant the white corn and the bicolor at the same time, as long as you aren't saving seeds.. i've also heard to not do it as they will cross pollinate and result in tough kernels.
Or.. i've heard that its ok, as long as you say, plant one one week then wait a few weeks and plant the other variety...
Any thoughts on this? I dont have 100 feet to separate the varieties either.. more like only a few feet :)
When cross-pollination occurs, the effect is seen in the plants grown from the resulting seeds. The seeds themselves (corn kernels in this case) reflect the plant on which they grow.
This is best illustrated by Japanese plums. To set fruit, Satsuma plums require cross-pollination from a different variety of Japanese plum. Often, Santa Rosa plums (which don't require cross-pollination) are used for cross-pollinating Satsuma plums. The resulting fruit on a Satsuma tree are clearly Satsuma plums. However, planting the seeds from such plums will not produce a Satsuma tree.
With corn, follow the recommendations of the seed producer with regard to cross pollination. For some varieties it doesn't matter, for others one can lose the benefits of hybridization that way.
The time delay in planting can be effective at preventing cross pollination by staggering the time at which the plants are in flower, but one needs to study the details of the life cycle of the corn varieties being planted to know how best to do it--get it wrong and you can end up having two varieties that if planted at the same time would not have cross pollinated due to different maturation rates cross pollinating because of the staggered planting dates.
However, they are indeed hybrid plums, different from their wild ancestors. The effect is the same. The development of seeds and fruit is dictated by the characteristics of the plant on which the seeds and fruit develop, not on the genotype of the seed "germ" (the part that forms a new plant when the seed sprouts).
So much pollen drifts through the air or is carried by insects from one variety to another (e.g., from my neighbor's cherry tomatoes to my own beefsteak tomatoes) that having named varieties of vegetables, fruits, and grain would be meaningless if cross-pollination affected the resulting crop. The results of cross-pollination is seen only in the next generation of plants.
In the case of a plum, the edible part which surrounds the seed is generated by the parent plant, and will have the properties of the parent plant.
In the case of sweet corn, you are eating the seed derived from pollination. It is wholly derived from the product of pollination, germ and embryo.
The genes responsible for it being sweet (as opposed to starchy) and white (as opposed to yellow) are recessive.
It's ok if SU (sugary) strains cross with SE (sugary enhanced) strains, but cross pollinating either with field corn varieties will result in a loss of sweetness.
Crossing any other type of corn (even other types of sweet corn) with an sh2 (shrunken) type can give you corn that is tough and starchy.
Yellow color is dominant over white, so a white corn variety that is pollinated by a yellow variety will turn yellow. And thus your Silver Queen may end up specked with gold if it crosses with a yellow corn. Bicolor types have genes for both white and yellow, so express a mixture and will also speckle your white variety with some yellow. And bicolors that cross with yellow varieties will be predominantly yellow. (Since I'm assuming you haven't emasculated your white or bicolor corn, they will still manage to produce some white kernels.)
So, going back to the original question, it's ok to plant bicolor and white sweet corn in the same garden (as long as they are either both sh2 types, or both su or se types), as long as you don't insist your white corn be pure white.
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