This morning I got a bed ready for planting corn on Friday. It's a method I've tinkered with the last two years and it works. It's an 18' bed and there will be seven 18" wide circles spaced 27" on center with eight seeds planted 6" apart around the circle. I finally got smart and made a jig so that I can quickly scribe a 9" radius around the center of the circle.
Then I dug a small trench a few inches outside the circle, applied the fertilizer (some nitrogen plus a tad of 5-10-15), covered it over and raked the bed smooth. I will scribe the planting circles again before seeding.
In the far corner of this bed were Shimonita scallions from last spring that were making seed for collection but they were in the way so I yanked out all but one. This year's fall Shimonitas in another bed are bolting prematurely and blooming so I'll collect seed from those.
This bed will be Spring Treat, an early 67 day corn that's very sweet. Then two weeks later, four 18' long double rows of Silver Queen will be planted in the open area of the garden. And finally, two weeks after that, I'm doing a bed of Japanese Hulless Popcorn. That's another of this year's toys, one I've never played with before. It should be interesting and hopefully it's all been planned so that nothing cross pollinates.
Soil temp today is 55 degrees. Spring Treat is one of those corns that doesn't mind being planted in cool soil. However, the high temps will be upper 70's by the weekend and if necessary I can put some plastic over the bed to boost the soil temp to 60-65.