Intense corn gardening

[cowgirl8]

If you're wanting the most from your garden and are tired of all the work for little payout, intense garden.
Here i have over 60 corn plants in a space of 4x10. If you live in the south, you're probably thinking this is late spring. No, this corn was planted in July. My reasoning for planting it this time of year is all the bugs who invade corn life cycle is now over. Plant in the spring and you'll either have to spray to keep the worms out, or, just live with the worms. Planting in July gets you out of that corn worm life cycle and bug free corn. The only thing you'll need to make sure you do is water the corn. I have a automatic drip system, easily installed and cheap, on this corn. I have it set for 5 minutes twice a day. I planted, and waited. Off these 60 plants, i got over 80 ears of bug free corn and it never had anything applied to it in the form of insecticide.
I dont remember the variety, but it was a white and yellow sweet corn. I plan to plant twice as much this year so that i can can up a bunch also. I preserved the corn in the husk and just dropped them in the deep freeze. We are still eating corn and probably wont finish it before i'm ready to store more. I didnt can any up last year, so looking forward to this year.

 

[M5farm]

So you harvest in October/ November

 

[Kingfisher]

Corn is 6 for a buck at HEB and it's perfect.....I'd rather have a pool....

 

[cowgirl8]

So you harvest in October/ November

I harvested in mid Sept.

 

[cowgirl8]

Corn is 6 for a buck at HEB and it's perfect.....I'd rather have a pool....

Thats so true.. :lol2: I just got so tired of cleaning it and no one swimming. And the skimmer, hated cleaning the skimmers :x ... My garden keeps me challenged to feed us without buying from a grocery store. And with the space i have, i love seeing how far i can push the things i grow. I have an acre lawn surrounding our house and garden area, so i could expand and i do have a couple tractor tire planters with extra tomatoes, but i hate mowing around them but my pool garden is a great low maintenance way to garden. Pretty much all i do is plant, put in a drip and pick. The hard work is storing and processing what i grow.

 

[presmudjo]

Hmmm, by July my garden will be half empty if not more. Think it would work in central Florida to plant corn then? What does it cost to experiment, a pack of seeds and a little time? I don't know how hot you all get in ne Texas.

 

[cowgirl8]

Hmmm, by July my garden will be half empty if not more. Think it would work in central Florida to plant corn then? What does it cost to experiment, a pack of seeds and a little time? I don't know how hot you all get in ne Texas.

Exactly! The most important thing is to make sure it gets watered. But i dont think the location would be much different than here. Might be even better where you are.

 

[presmudjo]

Corn here is about 50¢ an ear I think. Was 25¢ an ear when it first came out. I have way to far to ride to get it by the box from any pickers.

 

[torogmc81]

Hey cowgirl thanks for the idea. May I suggest one change to your system. Water less days, with longer times. Try 2-3 days a week with 20-30 min watering. A lot better for the plants and soil. Just something to think about. Good luck

 

[cowgirl8]

Corn here is about 50¢ an ear I think. Was 25¢ an ear when it first came out. I have way to far to ride to get it by the box from any pickers.

The past few years the ear corn i've bought has been really bad. We did drive up to the Dakotas and bought corn up there. I was amazed at how long the ears were. We do road trips and sleep out in the back of the truck and those giant ears of corn were delish grilled....Here in texas, the corn is pretty bad at the grocery stores. We have no idea what kind of corn world there is out there............ I want to grow a bunch this year to can. I love canned corn.

 

[MudHog]

That's not that intense. Give square foot gardening a try. Corn is 4 plants in one square foot, so that would equal 160 plants in a single 4x10 bed. I built myself 4 new raised beds this year, but fighting Nitrogen problems as the bedding mix wasn't fully composted. This Summer I plan to spread composted chicken manure and add some triple 13 to get ready for Fall crops. I have six total, plus a "big garden" which is 60x80 that we use our tractor in. The big garden was my grandfather's garden, but I'm producing more than him in my beds so I supply him vegetables. Using the big garden more now for Fall crops that I can feed to the cows during the winter.

 

[cowgirl8]

I'll plant more this time then...........thanks

 

[MudHog]

Anytime. Give this link a try for some reading on square foot gardening. Page 13 is the reference to how many plants per square foot.

http://www.suwanee.com/pdfs/Square%20Fo ... 031610.pdf

 

[cowgirl8]

I'm on several fb gardening gardening groups and several there have learn with the square foot plans...Although sort of like i do, but not with such limited space. i want enough to put up for the winter, i do plant most things intense so i will. But, what i see some qf gardeners do starting out is they plant a tomato among their other things. Now, not sure if its like this everywhere but it is where i live, but a tomato plant will take up most of a container garden. Mine get over 6 feet tall and if not contained in cattle panels they will spread out. Same with squash, one squash plant will take a space of 4x6....I have a tractor tire with 3 tomato plants in.....Right now they are 7 feet tall and it takes cattle panels to hold them up.

 

[regolith]

That's not that intense. Give square foot gardening a try. Corn is 4 plants in one square foot, so that would equal 160 plants in a single 4x10 bed. I built myself 4 new raised beds this year, but fighting Nitrogen problems as the bedding mix wasn't fully composted. This Summer I plan to spread composted chicken manure and add some triple 13 to get ready for Fall crops. I have six total, plus a "big garden" which is 60x80 that we use our tractor in. The big garden was my grandfather's garden, but I'm producing more than him in my beds so I supply him vegetables. Using the big garden more now for Fall crops that I can feed to the cows during the winter.

Local council garden has set up a plot as 'square foot gardening' within the last couple of months.
I have to say with what I know of vegetable growing it didn't look like it was going to be useful or successful. It's not too different to what I do at home (as an alternative to rotating crop types) but my sections run more like 3 ft square and the plants have more space to spread out.
However I did see it again about a week ago and the plants still looked healthy. Lost the photos I took unfortunately, but I can get more. It had been set up on a raised site that formerly held a chook hutch.

 

[greybeard]

My sister plants corn in a similar fashion, but very precisely. She cut a 3'x3' sq of the plastic diagonal shaped lattice. She lays it down, pokes a hole with her finger and plants one seed in the "upper" corner of each diagonal, but skips one 'row' of lattice between. Flips over it forward and does the same thing again until she gets to the end. Corn comes up 8" apart in any direction.
She returns to where she started, lays the lattice back down where she began, flips it sideways twice, which means she has 3' between where her other seed "rows" are, and starts again till she gets to the end. She gets great pollination, but this does make it difficult if you need to side dress or go in and stand stalks back up after a big wind.