OT; will corn cross pollinate?

You know you need to buy hybred field corn seed, not just from a farmer's bin? While bin-run corn will grow & yield some corn, it has _very_ low yield.

You should have put some lime on last fall, lime takes time to work like a Tums on the soil. But, put some lime on for the acid.

You can use a good N,P,K fertilizer - but it will not do much good until you raise your soil ph. Lime is more important if you have acid soil.

Field corn will use about 1 lb of N for each bushel of corn produced, and perhaps 40# of P & K as well - in rough numbers. Perhaps some of that is already in your soil, perhaps not much? So if you want 100 bu of field corn per acre, you would want to add 100-40-40 # of actual fertilizer per acre.

Sweet corn yields about 2/3 as much as field corn, so would use about 2/3 as much fert.

Very general guidelines.

--->Paul

As a general rule, it don't profit to grow fieldcorn in a garden plot for any reason. Remember, field corn yield is bushels/acre. 85x75 is 6375 sq/ft and an acre is 43560 sq/ft, so yer planting just a mere 0.146 acre. Good fieldcorn yield is 200 bu/ac but is usually closer to 150 bu/ac, so iff'n yer good garden was planted 50/50 field corn, ya'd only have the potential of about 10 bu of field corn. What's 50# sack of corn at the feed store sell for?

Infact, I doubt yer local gardenstore will even have fieldcorn seed in the display racks and most field corn is hybrid ennyways (sterile). Grow several varitys of sweetcorn and stagger time plant them. Might even consider growing Indiancorn instead of fieldcorn. Infact you can actually feed sweetcorn instead of fieldcorn, eather dried and shelled (not much yield) or fresh and husked for a treat..... ...Dell

It sure won't. :>)

Allan

Fertilizer... I use horse manure. On my whole garden (about 40' x 50')
Seed depth, 1 1/2 - 2 inches or so (I use an antique push-plow to cut my rows, drop the seeds in, then the same plow to cover the rows).
Spacing... I usually go about 12" in the row, 30" between the row. This year, though, I went about 18" in the row and dropped wax bean seeds between the corns (in the row).
If your soil ends up being too acidic, hit it with some agricultural lime. Feed stores around here sell it...

HTH

Steve

Heck yes! Let 'er cross; just makes it better to eat anyway. :>)

Allan

You'd better believe it!! I'd almost prefer field corn that's just over ripe (only a day or two) to sweet corn, anyway.

Steve

Everybody I know does this as the last part of corn planting time; the last pass is sweet corn.

6 to 7" apart and 2 1/2" deep should do the trick.

Allan

Now THAT'S funny!!

Steve