Weeds in corn and other vegetables

I?m about to start getting my garden ready to plant
corn,field peas and okra.my question is can I spray
or treat the ground against weeds or was that
something I should have done earlier? Always used
a garden hoe in the past but if there?s an easier
way.........and yes it?s warm enough;it was 85
today,west Texas will come close to 100 degrees
later this week.(I?m in Louisiana)

Tractor with cultivators,tillers,walk behind garden tractors lots of ways to get rid of weeds.I make my rows 6ft apart so I can go between the rows with my MF compact and 4ft tiller,leaves only a very narrow strip that needs hoe work.With things like corn I use the hillers on the Hines to throw dirt up to the stalks and cover the small weeds like morning glories.

For a garden cultivating is best . You can spray corn with 24d but it will kill most of the other stuff in the garden if peas hear you say 24d they?ll wilt . I always hilled corn and potatoes even peas and beans

When you say hilled do you mean a hipped up row?everything I plant is on a row with all the heavy rain we get here

After your corn and Peas or other crops are up sprinkle some Preen on the ground. Will kill the weeds and grass as they come up.

Hoeing the weeds is one of the most important parts of the home gardening experience. Giving that experience up will take a lot of the enjoyment out of those fresh raised-yourself vegetables, and will spoil the flavor too.

10-4 on using Preen. The stuff works great. Like you say, though, the desired plants have to be up before you use it.

What works for me is dried like hay grass clippings of my lawn, which has nothing applied to it. When I cut, by making windrows, switching direction each pass. I adjust my cutting depth to not make too much, depends on how long since the last cutting and how much I want. Also, it dries faster. I then collect the dry clippings in a lawn sweep and pile near the garden. I spread it on thick.

For me, I need it right when I transplant into the garden, after tillage, I lay planks out, so I don't compact the soil as much with my feet, I plant, then I mulch it with the dry grass clippings. This covers the soil, it helps hold the moisture in this soil of loam/clay and organic matter and I get minimal, if any weeds. Once those plants grow, they shade out the area around them. Drying the clippings makes it easier to handle for mulching and is so much less weight on the lawn sweeper.

I prefer it as green as possible, like a good hay crop, it's loaded with nitrogen and a thick layer of it will grow some nice corn once that rain washes through it, kind of like a tea, all that goes into the soil. Putting it down when I plant, the weeds never get a chance to grow. I've actually packed some garbage cans with a bunch of this for this season, I kept it inside, I also dried it down inside on a tarp before storing it, loosely spread and fluffed up by hand with a fork, then packed it.

One year, I piled a bunch at the end of a sorry looking row of corn in poor soil in a section of my large garden patch. Those plants were the darkest olive drab green stalks I had, and they all had multiple ears. I don't seem to get any weed seed doing this. I have also used 2nd cut hay from the previous season. Do beware that you don't want excess nitrogen, that'll get you good green growth, but you may lack flowering. Never been a problem for me yet, with corn, tomatoes, bell peppers, maybe, same with eggplant, as they like the same things in the soil. I like it because I can walk away from the garden after planting and just worry about watering if it gets dry. Only place weeds have popped up are near the plants themselves, in that little space in between the plant stalk and the edge of the mulch.

The below was a couple years back, the plants were a bit crowded, should have spread them out more, but everything produced like crazy, one of the best I've ever had actually. This year I will cage my tomatoes with my own cages made from fencing fabric, they become a bit of a mess when crammed in. All of this was mulched with my lawn grasses, only fertilizer was dried blood and bone meal that was tilled in. I thought the results were pretty good. I had a pumpkin vine in with cucumbers by mistake and you know that vine went crazy, across the corn and hung basketball size pumpkins off the corn and the fence around the garden, will never forget that.

Hello everyone, I'm probably the newest member to the YT forum board. My wife and I typically plant corn, purple hull peas, snap beans, and cream peas first, then in about the last week of May we will plant our okra. We produce okra unti late Sept. The thing is, we use some our produce but give the rest away to family and friends. We plant 6-8 80' rows, so being in our mid 60's can be hard on a body when hoeing. Like TF.....this will be my first year to use my pto tiller to maintain the area between rows. We've used a regular hand tiller in the past on occasion.

I turn 73 in 2 weeks and like to hoe but rely on Treflan (farm product of Preen). It's labeled for onions and potatoes PPI but I use it post emergence on everything else. Made the mistake of planting 25 foot of broom corn and fighting cane ever since. But wife got all she wanted and sold $85 worth of tassels, too. Using it post still requires tilling around the plants, pumpkins, squash, cabbage, tomatoes and corn, etc. Then fill in exposed soil with composted leaves and grass clippings and carefully spray weeds that escape with a hand sprayer and 3% Roundup and 28% carrier and water mix. Hope this helps.

I like to spray my garden early and then work it up real good. For sweet corn I plant roundup ready so weeds are easy in it. Like the others said preen once its up. In beans and maters I use something I get at rural king for grasses in broadleaves but I can not remember the name and its at dads in the shop.

Thanks guys didn?t know about preen think I?ll try it

No it won?t and the corn tastes just as good as if you didn?t
spray it

Yes .

You can spray with a glyphosate (Roundup and several generics) before planting, will kill the green weeds but not anything that sprouts the next day.

Generally most other sprays will kill grasses or kill broadleaves, and so it becomes difficult in a garden setting to spray all the different crops without hitting something you don?t want to kill.

Select is a oretty good herbicide to kill grasses in many types of garden crops, but remember corn is a grass so it will kill corn.

Paul

I have a Farmall 100 and 140 don't need a hoe well maybe on the okra but once it gets a foot tall throw the dirt to it...

Peas (beans) you can about cover them up when cultivating they will survive and thrive.

I have tried most all I mulch with grass clippings is about the easiest it gets... I call it once and done : )

Just as important as killing weeds breaking up hard crusted soil and keeping it loose is necessary too in my mind. I don't see how decent crops can be produced simply by just spraying weeds. If roundup keeps giving cancer we will all be cultivating again.