
I'd LOVE to see some photos of your food forest! What are the steps to planting this way. I'm having a hard time picturing the process without getting stuck in the conventional field growing method.soil wrote:we grow rainbow inca sweet corn. which is a sweet eating corn, as well as a dry flour corn all in one. taste great and non gmo/hybrid. i don't really have a corn patch, there just all over the food forest. all 500 of them.
the rainbow inca sweet corn makes for some CRAZY GOOD homemade tortillas, has to be the best ive ever had.
fed nothing really, all the goodies are in the soil. the only thing i water with other than water is ACT.
Here's my corn patch as of three days ago:DoubleDogFarm wrote:How about some pictures of your corn patch.
and here it is on June 28:TheWaterbug wrote:Here's my corn patch as of [June 24, 2011]:
[img]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3552590/Corn062411.jpg[/img]
I don't think I'm getting much heat from anything these days. It's just be lolling around in the high 60s and low 70s. Later this week it's supposed to break 80, so I'm hoping for a growth spurt. I think the wall might help once there's actually some heat to work with.DoubleDogFarm wrote:That's quite a jump in 4 days. Are you getting extra heat of the concrete wall?
Have you grown corn before? Are you concerned with the cross pollination?
Yeah, I read about planting in blocks _after_ the corn had gone in. I do a lot of thatDoubleDogFarm wrote:I'm also wonder, not only cross pollination, but lack of pollination. If the one row comes to maturity before the other you maybe in trouble. You may have to hand pollinate. Blocks of corn are better than long rows.
You'll definitely have to post some pictures!TZ -OH6 wrote:I've been pollinating my corn because I'm trying to segregate different colors and have them separted by grouped hills.
This is an SE variety, too, according to several sources. Although Stover doesn't mention it as such on their seed packet or on their website, which is weird.TheWaterbug wrote:So it looks like the 2nd and 3rd rows were [url=https://www.stoverseed.com/P_vegetables_9.html]Bi-Licious[/url], which is a 75-80 day variety.
and here it is on July 2nd:TheWaterbug wrote:Here's my corn patch as of [June 24, 2011]:
[img]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3552590/Corn062411.jpg[/img]
YIKES!Public service message: if you google "delectable bilicious bodacious" not all the results are about sweet corn:)
8 days later, and it's way taller than he is:TheWaterbug wrote:and here it is on July 2nd:
[img]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3552590/Corn070211.jpg[/img]
On July 14th it was way taller than me:TheWaterbug wrote:In fact, some of it's taller than me! (I'm 6' 1'') [this was July 10]
[img]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3552590/Corn071011b.jpg[/img]
Interestingly, I have ears on some of my tillers!TZ -OH6 wrote:Do not remove the tillers. They don't cause any harm and may help bulk up your kernels from the added photosynthesis.
Suckers = tillers, whatever you call them. Do not pull them. Let them grow as they will. You will find your corn patch will do better if they are left on. Tillers are leaves to make food for the plant. Why would you want to pull the leaves off the plant?Question: Do you pull off all the suckers?
When I was studying corn planting online early this spring, I learned that spacing is dependent upon the plant's mature size. The author said to go by the seed packet's recommended spacing. My packet for my short (3') corn said 8" to 12", so I went with 8" on mine. Good thing I did, too, because germination was really lousyTheWaterbug wrote:Last week I drove through Central California, and I saw large, mature fields of corn that were planted _very_ densely. It seemed like they were 6-8" apart in rows, and the rows looked about a 12-18" apart, so 3x-6x denser than my patch. I was zipping by at 80 mph, though, so I couldn't see how many ears they had. But they were dark green and lush, so they certainly looked healthy.