Just a note: if people grow smaller lots of corn, try growing them as 3 sisters crops (beans, squash, corn) the squash will leaf out and keep weeds out on the floor; the beans climb the corn and help to bring more nitrogen to the soil. Also, if you lack enough manure compost, consider if you are using those old rained hay bales annoint them with human urine and fish emulsion (1 part urine to 10 parts water, and 1-2tbsp fish emulsion to a 4 gallon bucket of liquid) and then water it in well. I did 3 days of this seasoning and hose watering...then rain took care of the watering for me, but water the bales for a week if you don't get rain. (There is no odor once you water the bales in) I grew a few seasons in straw bales (direct sow & transplants into a cup of soil in the bale) and used this formula for fertilizer instead of chemicals - worked great - seasoned the bales 6 weeks prior to planting. Only had to water a few times during the summer as the bales hold lots of moisture. We chose this method because we lived on a rock hill with only inches of soil. I have to say our corn ears suffered because we didn't plant enough plants for good pollination, but the stalk growth was good & vital. The next season of growing I did not repeat the inoculation procedure and things still grew great. Once you're done with the bales you can mulch with it like you did with the hay. The procedure is less smelly than you think but a collection bucket down by the well or water source close to the garden helps a lot...spilling it is a nuisance >.
Organic gardening is NOT harder work with lower yield. I have been growing organically for years and have higher yield than others growing conventionally and I do very little work. The key is: stop tilling! start mulching and stop turning your soil over. just keep adding material on top and this will naturally choke out the weed seeds. Its good you mulched with hay, now stop cutting it under and let it build rich soil on top as it breaks down. I also stopped pulling every darn weed I see and just break or cut them off so the root system stays in the ground to create channels in the soil for water and air to better penetrate the ground and they also add organic matter to the under soil drawing in more worms and other beneficial soil organisms. I then just drop the weeds I broke off right there in the garden and the green growth of the weeds feed from above ground as they break down and create more mulch building a nice humus layer over time. The thing that make organic gardening more work is most are turning the soil and destroying the soil food web that feeds the crops, working against themselves. Why make more work for yourself? Work smarter not harder. Start covering the ground rather than uncovering it. Your soil needs a covering to stay healthy. All things need a covering to stay healthy. Just as your body needs your skin covering to stay healthy. Any time you uncover your flesh via a scrape you risk dis-ease (infection) of one kind or another. Same goes for your soil. Every time you uncover it you risk introducing dis-ease into your garden. Also with enough covering out around your plants in every direction, you eliminate the need to water between rainfall. My garden beds only dry out around the edge of the garden, so I do not plant right to the edge of the garden beds. My plants are always nice and green and very sturdy and healthy.
@Craig Taylor compost is perfect for mulching, only thing we can really use in England because its humid here and we get a lot of slugs. In drier climates you can use wood chips, hay, straw, leaves. Basically any green waste.
@@maxfreeman3764 Slugs love beer and dive right into it. Then they die happy. Place a narrow wooden board between rows, turn over in the morning and you will find slugs underneath. Kill everyone dead. There you go, two ways to get rid of them, without poisoning the garden. I also spread well crushed egg shells right around my plants, it feeds the garden, and somewhat discourages slugs and snails.
Great video. This helps so much because it has been years since we grew corn & this year we will be growing corn. We will be sure to evenly distribute that compost - I can see how important that is. That was a good lesson to learn before hand. Thank you. Judi
This is the first year we've used our own compost and our corn is well over our knees. The soil in my raised beds is actually chunky, even after sitting for a year, but I needed to fill 8 new boxes, so I used what I had and only back filled with some store bought soil. I wasn't sure that anything would grow in this chunky mix, but it's doing great!
We definitely appreciate all your hard work and sharing your living ups and downs. This makes it well worth all the effort so others will benefit off your successes and failures. Cu doz to you SSLFamilyDad.
Mine did really great for a while but then they’ve just stopped growing and also started turning yellow. I fertilized them with some fish fertilizer about a week ago. I’m hoping they grow some more. Fingers crossed.
I know I’m years behind on the comment but just to brag on myself my corn is head high by April 27th, 2021. 🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻Been pumping that 20-20-20 to em along with chicken bedding every couple weeks I also did the hay to start with to hold the moisture in I’m in 8b north Fl.
Wow, that's a lot of corn! The more I learn about compost, the more I'm convinced that's the way to go. I started my first compost pile, and ordered some worms to make vermicompost. As they say, feed the soil, not the plants, right? If you feed the soil, the soil will feed the plants. But more than that, it prevents a lot of disease and pests if the plants are healthy. I have a question, tho...why don't you roto-till on the side of the corn that's next to the grass? Wouldn't it help with the nutrients that the grass is taking? Good visual!
I wonder how it'd fare with mowing (very low to reduce strength of the competition) between the rows rather than roto-tilling. (Maybe next year I will seed maize into mowed clover.)
I did fine growing my white sweet corn 17 foot last year with using sand red dirt and worm castings and top soil. You have to support them though like I did. Basically tie them all together with bamboo .
Nice corn patch - I wish I had that much room! You should get a stirrup hoe for weeding. You can zip between the plants really well, do major cleanup quickly, and have just a small bit of hand-weeding right close to the stalks. A lot more standing, less crouching, too!
You worked your ass off getting the weeds out! Our garden needs somewhat the same treatment. What works well for quick nitro fertilizer is urine and water. Sounds gross but works well.
Hmmm.....I try to stay positive with my comments, but you need to scrap that rototiller. I've never seen a 'rototiller' in nature other than pigs. Destroying 2/3rds of your sqr footage/ substrate to PROMOTE weed growth is TWICE counter productive. Next year, lay out your rows and paths how you want. Once the seedlings are up 4-6 inches, come in with a 'hoop hoe' and cut the weeds down in the paths to 1 inch below grade. Get rid of that weedy dirt or 'hill' some of the plant rows that may benefit. Fill the paths with 4-8" of mulch. Next year, 'shift' your garden rows to the center of this year's rows and repeat. 2 seasons of this and weeding becomes a 5 minute a day task. Hope this helps.
Doesn’t mulch draw nitrogen from the soil and that’s why we use hay to block weeds because the hay deprives the soil of nitrogen by using the nitrogen to decompose the hay. Green mulch will provide nitrogen but brown hay will draw nitrogen away from the soil. The compost was already decomposed therefore high in nitrogen but putting brown hay on the compost will use all that nitrogen up
7foot tall and silking today, 13th july at 52°N in England. Mirai sweetcorn, on 20 inch centres, porous pipe irrigation and poultry manure and blood, fish n bone pellets.
I planted sugar enhanced (se) and standard sugar (su) corn together in one 4x6 before I learned about the danger of cross pollination. 😭 I really don't want to pull them out unless it's recommended. What should I do??? ⁉️
The newspaper Works real well but make sure you water the newspaper when you lay it down I get kinda anxious I live in newspaper down a little early every 2 to 3 weeks you need to lay new down depends on how fast the newspaper breaks down in the weeds push through help slow down evaporation on the dirt that is under the newspaper
we mulch with composted manure and hay in many of our gardens and yes it will introduce seeds. That is not really a problem at this point in the cycle as the hay will suppress the growth of the seeds by blocking out light and by the time any start to grow the plants will be tall enough to block light as well. We will still also need to come through and pick weeds once more before this crop is ready to harvest. The advantage far outweighs the cons in this case with natural methods
I like to use manure but you can't use it from a source that feeds roundup ready hay. Yes ,its out there and it will ruin your garden for a couple of years.
What are your thoughts on no till? Seems you could potentially save yourself a lot of work. Also I don't believe organic gardening has to inherently mean more work and less yields. Yes small farms are going to take a lot more work per yield than say a large mono crop farm, as everything is not as streamlined and mechanized.
For organic gardening, I would agree that you don't necessarily get lower yields, but I do think it requires more work. Dealing with insects and weeding require a bit more effort than the big-agra "spray everything" model. Making your compost requires effort, mulching requires effort, picking big ugly horn worms off your tomatoes requires effort. But: I think if you can maintain soil health, keep up with weeds (mulch, fabric, manual weeding, whatever) and keep on top of the insects the yields are similar to non-organic. It just requires a bit more elbow grease and love
Never never never use grass clippings as mulch. Repeat. never!! Leaves are good, and wood chips are ok. But not grass clippings. If you can compost them sufficiently that'll work for compost. But never mulch... I learned the hard way. The grass growing in my garden is far superior than the grass growing in the lawn. Ha Ha...
I have 48 corn stalks with tassels in my square foot garden (zone 8b) but I only see evidence of 1 ear of corn that just appeared today. We have had winds and rain that should help distribute the pollen. What do I need to do to get more ears of corn? I have a 3-6-3 organic fertilizer and chicken manure/kitchen scrap compost. Will it help to add that to the rows? Thank you for your help.
If they are close together you should not have any issues with pollination. It could be other factors also, heat, water, fertilizer, etc. Healthy plants with no stress will produce more fruit. I would say go ahead with the fertilizer but at this point they may be past that point.
I think having soil that had other stuff growing the previous year could also help. (Heavier fertilizing is if you grow the same stuff repeatedly.) In my case I've been occasional fertilizing with the remains of other plants from the yard that are burnt in the fire pit. (Not too often though, since supposedly that could affect soil pH.) Seems to be working well so far along with some watering early in the morning, and I'm a bit of a newbie at this.
I would say that with out the manure your corn was stunted.With it grew as it should have but did not double. Any way you did show what manure will do to a garden. And you do work hard at your farm.So dont let this arm chair farmer with his 2 cents make you angry :)Have a wonderful week.
lol, that is possible. The compost is what made the difference here though and since this is a virgin patch of garden this year it will take me a year to get the soil as rich as I would like it.
You should try bt roundup ready sweet corn, it’s triple sweet and tastes amazing, but if you want to stay away from that it’s ok just a thought to toss out there
Fernando Torres - What is your method, and how well is it working for you? Do you age it or process it in some way prior to use? And last, what type of benefits does it provide?
Just a note: if people grow smaller lots of corn, try growing them as 3 sisters crops (beans, squash, corn) the squash will leaf out and keep weeds out on the floor; the beans climb the corn and help to bring more nitrogen to the soil. Also, if you lack enough manure compost, consider if you are using those old rained hay bales annoint them with human urine and fish emulsion (1 part urine to 10 parts water, and 1-2tbsp fish emulsion to a 4 gallon bucket of liquid) and then water it in well. I did 3 days of this seasoning and hose watering...then rain took care of the watering for me, but water the bales for a week if you don't get rain. (There is no odor once you water the bales in) I grew a few seasons in straw bales (direct sow & transplants into a cup of soil in the bale) and used this formula for fertilizer instead of chemicals - worked great - seasoned the bales 6 weeks prior to planting. Only had to water a few times during the summer as the bales hold lots of moisture. We chose this method because we lived on a rock hill with only inches of soil. I have to say our corn ears suffered because we didn't plant enough plants for good pollination, but the stalk growth was good & vital. The next season of growing I did not repeat the inoculation procedure and things still grew great. Once you're done with the bales you can mulch with it like you did with the hay. The procedure is less smelly than you think but a collection bucket down by the well or water source close to the garden helps a lot...spilling it is a nuisance >.
Organic gardening is NOT harder work with lower yield.
I have been growing organically for years and have higher yield than others growing conventionally and I do very little work.
The key is: stop tilling! start mulching and stop turning your soil over. just keep adding material on top and this will naturally choke out the weed seeds.
Its good you mulched with hay, now stop cutting it under and let it build rich soil on top as it breaks down.
I also stopped pulling every darn weed I see and just break or cut them off so the root system stays in the ground to create channels in the soil for water and air to better penetrate the ground and they also add organic matter to the under soil drawing in more worms and other beneficial soil organisms. I then just drop the weeds I broke off right there in the garden and the green growth of the weeds feed from above ground as they break down and create more mulch building a nice humus layer over time.
The thing that make organic gardening more work is most are turning the soil and destroying the soil food web that feeds the crops, working against themselves.
Why make more work for yourself? Work smarter not harder.
Start covering the ground rather than uncovering it. Your soil needs a covering to stay healthy. All things need a covering to stay healthy.
Just as your body needs your skin covering to stay healthy. Any time you uncover your flesh via a scrape you risk dis-ease (infection) of one kind or another.
Same goes for your soil. Every time you uncover it you risk introducing dis-ease into your garden.
Also with enough covering out around your plants in every direction, you eliminate the need to water between rainfall.
My garden beds only dry out around the edge of the garden, so I do not plant right to the edge of the garden beds.
My plants are always nice and green and very sturdy and healthy.
@Craig Taylor Try leaf mold :3
Thank you
thank you! this is one of the same things Masanobu Fukuoka talked about doing. better farming is about less, not more
@Craig Taylor compost is perfect for mulching, only thing we can really use in England because its humid here and we get a lot of slugs. In drier climates you can use wood chips, hay, straw, leaves. Basically any green waste.
@@maxfreeman3764
Slugs love beer and dive right into it. Then they die happy.
Place a narrow wooden board between rows, turn over in the morning and you will find slugs underneath. Kill everyone dead. There you go, two ways to get rid of them, without poisoning the garden.
I also spread well crushed egg shells right around my plants, it feeds the garden, and somewhat discourages slugs and snails.
Great video. This helps so much because it has been years since we grew corn & this year we will be growing corn. We will be sure to evenly distribute that compost - I can see how important that is. That was a good lesson to learn before hand. Thank you. Judi
This is the first year we've used our own compost and our corn is well over our knees. The soil in my raised beds is actually chunky, even after sitting for a year, but I needed to fill 8 new boxes, so I used what I had and only back filled with some store bought soil. I wasn't sure that anything would grow in this chunky mix, but it's doing great!
I have been surprised also in our raised beds with the compost I used it was very thick and is now broken down well and things are growing great!
We definitely appreciate all your hard work and sharing your living ups and downs. This makes it well worth all the effort so others will benefit off your successes and failures. Cu doz to you SSLFamilyDad.
Mine did really great for a while but then they’ve just stopped growing and also started turning yellow. I fertilized them with some fish fertilizer about a week ago. I’m hoping they grow some more. Fingers crossed.
Thank you my 1st. Time going trying sweet corn.
I know I’m years behind on the comment but just to brag on myself my corn is head high by April 27th, 2021. 🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻Been pumping that 20-20-20 to em along with chicken bedding every couple weeks I also did the hay to start with to hold the moisture in I’m in 8b north Fl.
Definitely agree on the compost as natural fertilizer. Gonna be doing the same for the first time this year in our raised garden beds.
Wow, that's a lot of corn! The more I learn about compost, the more I'm convinced that's the way to go. I started my first compost pile, and ordered some worms to make vermicompost. As they say, feed the soil, not the plants, right? If you feed the soil, the soil will feed the plants. But more than that, it prevents a lot of disease and pests if the plants are healthy. I have a question, tho...why don't you roto-till on the side of the corn that's next to the grass? Wouldn't it help with the nutrients that the grass is taking? Good visual!
I am indigenous Montagnard live in NC I use grass cutting for my corn and vegetable they grown nice
I wonder how it'd fare with mowing (very low to reduce strength of the competition) between the rows rather than roto-tilling.
(Maybe next year I will seed maize into mowed clover.)
I did fine growing my white sweet corn 17 foot last year with using sand red dirt and worm castings and top soil. You have to support them though like I did. Basically tie them all together with bamboo .
Awesome, thanks for the video. I'm planting corn this year again. Now I know lol last year was crap
How did corn come out ? Did smaller plants catch up?
After a few years you'll get it evened out really well
Nice corn patch - I wish I had that much room! You should get a stirrup hoe for weeding. You can zip between the plants really well, do major cleanup quickly, and have just a small bit of hand-weeding right close to the stalks. A lot more standing, less crouching, too!
Here's one:
mikesbackyardnursery.com/2010/10/have-you-ever-seen-an-action-hoe/
Just an idea.... I planted pole beans sporadically in with the corn. Didn't get many bean pods, but plants set nitrogen to feed corn.
Using peas and beans in the corn patch is a great idea!
You worked your ass off getting the weeds out! Our garden needs somewhat the same treatment. What works well for quick nitro fertilizer is urine and water. Sounds gross but works well.
Nothing gross about it, I simply pee around my young trees, spread it around over time, it'd be a shame to waste it.
Hmmm.....I try to stay positive with my comments, but you need to scrap that rototiller. I've never seen a 'rototiller' in nature other than pigs. Destroying 2/3rds of your sqr footage/ substrate to PROMOTE weed growth is TWICE counter productive.
Next year, lay out your rows and paths how you want. Once the seedlings are up 4-6 inches, come in with a 'hoop hoe' and cut the weeds down in the paths to 1 inch below grade. Get rid of that weedy dirt or 'hill' some of the plant rows that may benefit. Fill the paths with 4-8" of mulch. Next year, 'shift' your garden rows to the center of this year's rows and repeat. 2 seasons of this and weeding becomes a 5 minute a day task. Hope this helps.
I processed my meat birds this weekend and used the blood on the corn patch. I diluted it 10:1 with water. Can't wait to see how it works!
Interesting, please follow up if you can and let me know how that works
I will let you know. Actually I think my ratio was more like 4 parts water to one part chicken blood. Love your channel. I am learning lots from you!
@@coyoteloghomesinc.1381 follow up on blood mixture???
@@patrapper7367 The corn patch loves it. We always get a good harvest.
13th July at 52°N and my organic mirai sweetcorn is 7foot tall and silking. Keep on top of them weeds, and fertilize with blood, fish n bone.
Really interesting video. Great ideas on using natural fertilisers.👍👍👍
Good info. I have chickens so I will let their manure age andvuse it on my corn and get some straw!!! God Bless!!!
Doesn’t mulch draw nitrogen from the soil and that’s why we use hay to block weeds because the hay deprives the soil of nitrogen by using the nitrogen to decompose the hay. Green mulch will provide nitrogen but brown hay will draw nitrogen away from the soil. The compost was already decomposed therefore high in nitrogen but putting brown hay on the compost will use all that nitrogen up
Come on down to Texas, I grow Blood Butcher corn 5ft tall by July!!! What a difference going a 1000 miles or so south will do!!!!
Crazy Yanks
7foot tall and silking today, 13th july at 52°N in England. Mirai sweetcorn, on 20 inch centres, porous pipe irrigation and poultry manure and blood, fish n bone pellets.
Good use of wet hay. 👍
Love the farmers! Going out to buy some sh__ __! Use grass cuttings now.
Do you have Comfrey growing around the property? look into that plant. It's good fertilizer and good protein for the goats.
I've been looking every where for comfrey, where is it best grown?
Do you catch grass to cut down on weeds? Plenty of grass there!
No substitute of vegi garden but fruit/nut trees and perennials come 1st for me as they are vastly lower labor per produce.
vinegar in a pump sprayer to help with the weeding a bit and a stirrup how for in between?
Would you think about digging out a pond?
absolutely! We have a small "watering hole" in the closest pasture and may expand that into a proper pond at some point
Great info!
I planted sugar enhanced (se) and standard sugar (su) corn together in one 4x6 before I learned about the danger of cross pollination. 😭 I really don't want to pull them out unless it's recommended. What should I do??? ⁉️
You'll probably be fine. Sample one cob at the sweetcorn stage and see if you like it.
That straw will save you a ton of work.
Lay down used newspapers to keep the weeds out of your garden
Carla, I have read about this method. Has it worked well for you? How do you keep it in place (keep it from blowing away)?
The newspaper Works real well but make sure you water the newspaper when you lay it down I get kinda anxious I live in newspaper down a little early every 2 to 3 weeks you need to lay new down depends on how fast the newspaper breaks down in the weeds push through help slow down evaporation on the dirt that is under the newspaper
Carla Jackson - Thank you for the tip. I will be moving to my new homestead in 3 weeks. I plan to try that when I get there. I appreciate your advise.
@@chrisshirley4877 cardboard worked best for me!
How deep were your seeds?
If the bales you're mulching with have seeds in them, you're gonna be fighting weeds long after you should have had to.
Yes happened to me. The seeds grew and overtook my garden. Took couple years to kill it out
we mulch with composted manure and hay in many of our gardens and yes it will introduce seeds. That is not really a problem at this point in the cycle as the hay will suppress the growth of the seeds by blocking out light and by the time any start to grow the plants will be tall enough to block light as well. We will still also need to come through and pick weeds once more before this crop is ready to harvest. The advantage far outweighs the cons in this case with natural methods
mwilliamshs
And smelly farts that come out of the butts of millions of people walking around.
Bless you! I still consider round up in the garden organic but I don’t have time for that effort
I have chicken manure but It isn't broken down to brown compost, will it burn my corn?
Mixed with native soil it should be just fine
@@SSLFamilyDad Thank You
I like to use manure but you can't use it from a source that feeds roundup ready hay. Yes ,its out there and it will ruin your garden for a couple of years.
Do you have anything growing in the greenhouse?
Not yet, will be growing in there starting in august-september
What are your thoughts on no till? Seems you could potentially save yourself a lot of work. Also I don't believe organic gardening has to inherently mean more work and less yields. Yes small farms are going to take a lot more work per yield than say a large mono crop farm, as everything is not as streamlined and mechanized.
For organic gardening, I would agree that you don't necessarily get lower yields, but I do think it requires more work. Dealing with insects and weeding require a bit more effort than the big-agra "spray everything" model. Making your compost requires effort, mulching requires effort, picking big ugly horn worms off your tomatoes requires effort.
But: I think if you can maintain soil health, keep up with weeds (mulch, fabric, manual weeding, whatever) and keep on top of the insects the yields are similar to non-organic. It just requires a bit more elbow grease and love
Does anyone know what brand of tiller that is ? Man that thing is a beast
I'm guessing it's a Cub Cadet gas rototiller....
Never never never use grass clippings as mulch. Repeat. never!! Leaves are good, and wood chips are ok. But not grass clippings. If you can compost them sufficiently that'll work for compost. But never mulch... I learned the hard way. The grass growing in my garden is far superior than the grass growing in the lawn. Ha Ha...
I have 48 corn stalks with tassels in my square foot garden (zone 8b) but I only see evidence of 1 ear of corn that just appeared today. We have had winds and rain that should help distribute the pollen. What do I need to do to get more ears of corn? I have a 3-6-3 organic fertilizer and chicken manure/kitchen scrap compost. Will it help to add that to the rows? Thank you for your help.
If they are close together you should not have any issues with pollination. It could be other factors also, heat, water, fertilizer, etc. Healthy plants with no stress will produce more fruit. I would say go ahead with the fertilizer but at this point they may be past that point.
My sweet corn is 7 ft height by July 4
How early are you planting?
how about a shot of manure tea once in a while?
I would like to set something up to make some compost teas throughout the year I just have not been able to get that done yet:)
Mona Bale
Corn causes smelly farts. Some people love the smell of their own farts.
Ooof, tilling right next to a shallow rooted crop. I cri
I must be doing something wrong. I put compost six inches deep, planted my corn and it's doing terrible.
Test your soil, see what it is lacking. Was it a single source compost (like all cow manure) or multiple sources?
Amen 🙏
Don't plant Corn in the shade. It needs full Sun, and plant the seeds deep enough so that it doesn't topple/fall over from the wind.
Western shade can sometimes be okay especially if you have trouble with water
I think having soil that had other stuff growing the previous year could also help. (Heavier fertilizing is if you grow the same stuff repeatedly.) In my case I've been occasional fertilizing with the remains of other plants from the yard that are burnt in the fire pit. (Not too often though, since supposedly that could affect soil pH.) Seems to be working well so far along with some watering early in the morning, and I'm a bit of a newbie at this.
Weeds should have been cultivated down every two weeks and side dress plants with nitrates
Who's buried under the tall corn?
I would say that with out the manure your corn was stunted.With it grew as it should have but did not double. Any way you did show what manure will do to a garden. And you do work hard at your farm.So dont let this arm chair farmer with his 2 cents make you angry :)Have a wonderful week.
lol, that is possible. The compost is what made the difference here though and since this is a virgin patch of garden this year it will take me a year to get the soil as rich as I would like it.
I use urea 😎
You should try bt roundup ready sweet corn, it’s triple sweet and tastes amazing, but if you want to stay away from that it’s ok just a thought to toss out there
I think this video is about how to grow weeds - not corn.
grass fert.
Thank you for not spraying your garden.
Or like double your weed growth
Too many weeds.
Where's the Big Secret, You're corn is, What do I say,,, Crap
Kinda sad looking
I use urea 😎
Fernando Torres - What is your method, and how well is it working for you? Do you age it or process it in some way prior to use? And last, what type of benefits does it provide?