WOW, 2-3 acres of sweet corn. That is a lot for a few families. My entire garden plot was 150' long and about 50' wide. This works out to about 0.2 acre. I supplied green beans, tomatoes, squash, and corn for three families to eat and freeze/can. We lost about a third of the corn to coons. We got about 550 ears, figure they got between 250 and 350. You always know when the corn is ready because the coons get in it the night before you are going to pick it.
We got enough green beans for slightly more than 100 quarts then pulled up the plants. Kentucky Wonders are the best at least in my opinion. They have the best flavor, if they are 'stuck' properly they are fairly easy to pick, and once they start producing they keep on until frost. We had a total of 250 row feet of them.
With more than 650 row feet of purple hull and black eyed peas we only froze 7 bags. The night before we were going to pick them the deer cleaned out the entire patch. And the plants were loaded.
This is a link you need to look at. It is from the Kentucky Ag Extension Service. I have raised gardens off and on for forty years and I have learned a lot from this pamphlet. How much to raise for storing for each member of a family, when to plant. When to harvest. Just about anything and everything is in here. You may have to spend some time looking for it, but it is there. If you use this just remember to update by your state's frost times, etc..
http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/id/id128/id128.pdf
If you are in Nebraska I am sure their state extension office has a similar pamphlet online with the correct planting dates for each crop.
I cannot imagine planting a garden without using chemical weed and insect control. When I was young we got most of our food from our garden and I can remember getting up at daylight and going with my mother and sisters and hoeing until about 11:00. There was four of us hoeing four hours a day, every day, and we still had weed trouble in the acre of garden Mom put out.
Good luck
RSKY
