Thread: growing corn ?
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Old April 2, 2017   #18
Nattybo!
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Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Maryland
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Gdaddybill, my daddy would tie thin strips of old t-shirts to a string that was over his corn rows to keep the birds from pecking. It sounds like a lot of work tieing a bunch of scraps to a string but he did it while watching t.v. So the work went by w/o much trouble. Maybe sparkly ribbon (like for helium balloons) would work too? But the bird netting row cover does sound faster.

Brownrexx is spot on! Follow his advice for corn spacing/rows.

Now all y'all that have raccoon problems I might have a solution. It's cucumbers. Ring your corn patch with cucumbers. I planted mine thick and had them climb string upwards. Make sure your cucumber variety is prickley. IIRC, I think the mouse melons didn't have any prickles and I worried about that corner of my corn Fort Knox.

This worked for me when I grew corn 2 or 3 years ago. I wanted to test it again with Silver Queen before recommending it but my gardenening plans haven't gone as planned for a couple of years now.

About 3 years ago I picked up this packet of corn seed. It was red, looked like fun, family thought it was too weird and they all said, "I ain't eating that!" Tasted fine to me? So did the raccoons stay out of my corn patch b/c of the cukes or b/c it was weird and red?
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