Advice needed on corn field

[daugen]

I purchased a small farm in coastal NC and am now venturing into row crop farming on a strictly retired have fun basis.
One of my bucket list items was to grow food for the needy, so this year I rented land from my elderly farmer neighbor, who rents the bulk of
his land to another farmer.

My concern on the diagram attached is how the corn the other tenant farmer will plant will affect my nice heritage corn being planted.
What happens when you put "Indian" corn next to someone's field of Silverqueen? or some other highly modified corn variety?
Will mine grow properly?
Am clearly way down on the corn biology ladder of understanding.
My concern is over cross pollination.
or maybe it should be my neighbor's concern about me?....

I own the land in the first section with the garden and the nut trees. To the left of that is my home and a big treeline around my 24 acres.
So this new garden and field area is in land purchased from the next door neighbor.
I'm in farm country and I have to "get along" for sure.

My concern also is on their use of Roundup, much less burning off the fields.
Folks do cheap, not necessarily right around here...and i don't know the other farmer but for saying hello. He's retired too but doing this for real,
not like me playing. In other words, he wants to make money,
not grow potatoes for the Food Bank.
I also don't want my crops wrecked by his chemicals either.
Or have crop dusters swoop down over my 200 organic tomato plants...
Biologically it's a dangerous world out there...

I was thinking of putting the heritage non GMO corn at the top of the second section in, where it says My Corn.
Then I was going to plant the Silver Queen and Peaches N Cream I also have below that corn and to the side of it if I ran out of room, so I'm surrounding my own
corn with problems potentially without this other guy coming in and putting in a relatively huge area of corn near me.

Is there any way of doing this better? Am I worried over nothing?
Not like I'm growing seed corn here. I'm going to eat it.
Well not the Indian corn.
I actually hope to have a corn harvest party, pick, eat and put away what I can, feed the help and give the rest to the Food Bank. They even said they'd come
help pick it, including the potatoes. Otherwise at age 68 this would be a bit much for me.

If this was the space available to you, and the other parts can't change, how would you lay out the corn
on this land in those two rental areas of mine?
thanks.
Drew

 

[LouNY]

If you do your planting as short rows next to each other, small patches of each variety you will reduce the cross pollination.
Your corn will not all mature at the same time even when planted the same day, there will be a several day window for each variety and planting.
One of the old ways was to plant it in staggered hills,

X X X X
. X X X X
X X X X
. X X X X

instead of even rows
X X X X
X X X X
X X X X
X X X X

have fun watch out for the critters, deer, coon, wood chucks, rabbits all enjoy gardens:drink:

 

[daugen]

short rows next to each other, small patches of each variety you will reduce the cross pollination.

Thanks Lou. I feel like the little boy asking why? why? why?
Pollination is needed but how does staggering help?
I absolutely agree with you and can only stop and start rows, they are all finished now and ready to go.
Ran a tiller over top of the rows in the picture, pulverized the sandy soil nicely.

I'd just skip a space where you have a period. What I don't understand, and if I may beg your drawing skills again...
can you do that diagram with numbers one through six, and then where to put the two "store bought" corn varieties I have, bright red
in their antibug coatings.

I'm a Bucks County PA farm boy, and I have both an airgun and a 5 shot .22 with hollow points and a nice scope.
I just wish my neighbor had a dog...I don't and that would be best. The part I own is all either 8 foot fenced or electric wire.

Now where to hide 15 varieties of melons from the critters too...I may be expanding my electric fence.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

This:

Planning Your Corn Crop - Garden.org

 

[LouNY]

That's a good article 2LaneCruzer linked.
Now for my questions to you;
1) which way do your rows run looking at your sketch if the top is North?
2) would that put your house on the South end ? with the rows going east/west
3) are the rows the long way or the short way on the paper ?
4) where you have Farmer rental are you planting that or is that some one else?
5) what are the growing days for your various varieties?
ie. Silver Queen 92 days, Peaches and Cream 83 days and the others
6) when I view your sketch it is in portrait mode with Collards in the upper left corner

thanks Lou

 

[MossRoad]

Good luck when it comes to crop dusters... I have friends who's home gardens have been effected negatively by crop dusters to the point they had to take legal actions on multiple occasions. It's hard to be a home gardener in big farm country when it comes to crop dusters.... one also had water damage to their house when an irrigation system malfunctioned, drove over there small trees and shrubs windbreak, through their fence and soaked their house for about half the night before someone could shut it down. Malfunctioning water-robot wreaks havoc! :laughing:

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Yep. They (crop duster) killed all of our baby chicks one year.

 

[daugen]

That's a good article 2LaneCruzer linked.
Now for my questions to you;
1) which way do your rows run looking at your sketch if the top is North?
2) would that put your house on the South end ? with the rows going east/west
3) are the rows the long way or the short way on the paper ?
4) where you have Farmer rental are you planting that or is that some one else?
5) what are the growing days for your various varieties?
ie. Silver Queen 92 days, Peaches and Cream 83 days and the others
6) when I view your sketch it is in portrait mode with Collards in the upper left corner

thanks Lou

different browsers sure do mess up pics. The diagram has the collards to the top right, not the top left.
Rows run up and down the page, running n/e to s/w, my home is to left of picture. Tractor is looking "down" the field.
Farmer rental is other tenant farmer, I have nothing to do with him other than being told he was planting corn this year
I will look up maturation days

 

[LouNY]

OK, you have 8 rows of my corn and 8 rows of my rental corn, so 16 rows of corn;
a corn patch about 3 times as long as wide?
The only reason for staggering your plants is if in hills it can allow for more optimum spacing for the plants as well as weed control.
Are you planning on planting in hills or rows? How are you planning on weed control, cultivating, hoeing, I'm going to guess you are not planning on chemicals.
Have you fertilized or are you going to ?
The farmer rental do you know if that is going to e sweet corn or field corn.
Are you going for one mass planting, or several spaced out plantings to get a longer harvest window for the different varieties.
I would try and keep the different varieties in square plots several rows wide by a somewhat equal length.
Also depending on your access direction I'd put my earlier varieties in the front so as it gets picked over I could have access through there to the later ones.
I hope I haven't confused (cornfused) you.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX row 1
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX row 2
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX row 3
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX row 4
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX row 8 or 16
different colors are for different varieties.

On an unrelated subject I take it that you are a Quaker?
I live about 3 miles from the Quakers white feather house up here.

Enjoy Lou

 

[RSKY]

First, I have never heard of anybody transplanting corn after it comes up. Why in the world are you doing that? Get you one of those cheap walk behind planters and put the seed in the ground.

Corn types will cross pollinate. You can read on the seed company's websites and each variety will have a maturation time and instructions as to how far it must be from other types. I solved this problem when I had five or six different varieties in one garden by planting the quickest maturing first, Early Sunglow at 59 days. Then the next shortest maturing time type a week later and so on until the last which was a 129 day type. I may have the times wrong because I am doing this from memory. Anyway I don't think I ever had cross pollination problems. BUT if at all possible do not plant different types close to each other. And corn is wind pollinated. I have always been told and read that you need a minimum or eight rows for successful pollination. If fewer than that keep the plot as close to square as possible.

Corn does not like a hardpan where the ground has been broke repeatedly at the same depth. One of the most successful row cropping corn farmers I ever knew stayed with a six row planter long after everybody else in the area had gone to twelve or more rows. He had the planter rows lined up behind the teeth of a huge ripper and pulled it behind a large four wheel drive tractor. I remember a neighbor borrowing the ripper and his 130-hp 1466 International would not pull it. The point is to tear that hardpan up.

After our last large garden we have stopped growing corn because it is easier to buy it at the local trade day. And the last time with all the different varieties coming in every two weeks it seemed like all we did that summer was pull corn.

And my wife forbid me to buy any other seed except Honey Select Triple Sweet. It was the favorite of everybody who tried it.

Riddle: How do you know when your sweet corn is ready to be pulled?

Answer: When you go to your garden one morning and the coons have ate most of it.

RSKY