Location - I'll guess North Carolina? What are your soils like, moisture, what is your soil test? How much N are you going to apply? So you know seed population per acre.....
What kind of yield are you wishing to get? 'Here' 200bu+ is possible, 100bu is easy, 150 is a good thing to aim for as a hobby. Lot of folk with 10 acres neglect the fertilizer & let the weeds grow and get 50. I don't see the point to that, why waste the time & effort......
Open polinated corn is cheaper seed, you can save seed from one year to the next. But is not top yielding.
Regular hybred corn can yield twice as much; but you cannot save seed from one year to the next - it doesn't grow right 2nd time.
Roundup Ready corn is hybred, it costs more but is easier/ used to be cheaper to control weeds.
Which do you want to grow? Each has plus & minus.
All corn should be row crop, I don't understand that part of your question? Corn needs to be planted with a planter into rows, so that it can be harvested... Also very important to get it to sprout at the very same time, or it competes with itself....
Notill, min till, or regular tillage depends on the impliments you have available to you! Notill for sure takes the right kind of planter. What do you have? 'Here' we do regular till because it is so wet & cold in spring, need to get the ground warmed & dried down. What do _you_ need, and what type of planter do you have?
Only cultivating takes real skill in understanding weeds & going out to harrow or cultivate the field _when_ it needs it before you actually see weeds; not when you have time or when you feel like it. Perhaps you have that skill from the sweet corn?
Regular corn sprays work fine, but they take a bit of timing, the earlier you spray the better, once the growing point comes out of the ground (perhaps the 5th or 6th leaf....) then the sprays get much more expensive or harm or kill the corn.
RR corn is much more forgiving as to timing spraying, especially if you get into a second flush of weeds later on.
In any of the 3, you need to keep weeds away _early_, as corn does not compete well at all with weeds when young. It messes up it's root building if it has to compete with weeds in those first couple weeks, and you just cut your yield in half.
Corn needs to be under 15% moisture if it is stored as kernals.
It needs to be stored under 24% on the ear. The ears need to be in a crib where air flows through it naturally, and it will dry over several months naturally to 15% or so - then you can shell it if you need kernals. The ears _cannot_ be stored in a closed up bin, they will mold just like the kernals would. It needs wind flow through the ears - open cribbing.
Cold weather - real cold like you don't get - can let you cheat on those numbers, but not much.
I do not know how you sell deer corn - as kernals or on the ear??????
Hope this helps, not sure what you want to do, that's the thing.
I don't suppose you need to try for 200 bu corn; but it seems a waste to get 50 bu corn......
--->Paul
