Interesting corn thread!
Attached is a photo of our Silver Queen planting. Six rows 3ft. centers with plant about 1ft. apart in the row. 50ft. rows. We had a nearby nesting pair of trashers do a lot of damage to the early small seedlings pulling them up and eating the kernel. I bet we lost 35% of our seedlings this way. Maybe 50% of those counted as lost regrew and matured at a slightly later date. We used no fertilizer on our corn crop other than urine mixed 5 gallons per 45 gallons of water and pumped using a sump pump from a 55 gallon plastic barrel. Our last side dressing was applied using a soil injecting probe but it was a little late in the life cycle of the corn to be most effective. It seemed to spur some unusual growth as the attachment points of the ears to the stalk elongated. We got about 380 ears total counting the sometimes good sized second ears and even a few edible third ears. Lots of the second ears did suffer from less than optimal pollination.
It's been almost thirty years now but Dad and I would grow Silver queen in double rows 1ft. apart and then a 4ft. walkway. We were using 'drip tape' and it cut the amount of tape in half this way. It worked out well.
We collect rain water and have a total of about 5,000 capacity. Next year we are going to plant Silver Queen on double rows 1ft. apart with 4ft. walkways. We plant in fairly deep furrows and do a lot of hilling by hand with a hoe. I enjoy it. My plan is to leave the soil in the middle of the 1ft. double planted row a little low so when we hand water there is a collection area and the water will not run as much into the walkway. Our sump pump pumps about six gallons per minute and we do all of our watering by hand wand unless soil injecting.
For 2019 we are going to play with more soil injection of the 10% urine/water mix going about 1ft. deep and paying special attention to our timing. We also soil injected our tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage and squash once this year. We used no additional fertilizers.
I watched on YouTube some interesting information on field corn production. AgBros Phd or something like that. It seems the trend for higher yield is for closer spacing resulting on one main ear being produced and secondary ears being suppressed by closer spacings. We will work this into our corn plan for 2019.
Attached is four photos of our garden taken on 6-13-2018. We are in Auburn GA 30011. Lifetime member, SSE.
|