Posted by jdemaris on May 03, 2010 at 06:55:23 from (67.142.130.21):
We sell sweet corn, and for that corn we plant differently. Still using many chemicals. Pretty much have to. If not, it's a mess picking, and if a customer sees one ear worm, it's freak-out time at the road-side stand.
But, for our own use, eating and freezing. we use no chemicals and I've been experimenting for 30 years here. That with sweet corn, potatoes, pole beans, squash, etc. All our land is side-hills. Also high elevation and the growing season is 2 weeks shorter as compared to farms just 20-30 miles away in Schoharie valley. Also the soil is very rocky. Rocks seem to "grow" every year. Considering this land has been farmed since the late 1700s and still full of rocks? Maybe they DO grow.
Feed corn is one thing and much more tolerant to cold-wet soil. Sweet corn a different story. So far, what's worked for us to get any early corn and potatoes in is this. I mow all last year's corn stalks. Then plow and disk and let sit for a week. Then, rototill with a five-foot tiller on an IH B-275 diesel. This chops up many early started weeds and mixes the warm soil with the deeper cold soil - and thus warms things up a bit at planting depth. Lift our big fertilzer bag with an IH B-275 (the one with the log splitter on the back). For potatoes, I use a Ferguson TO-35 Deluxe pulling two big furrowers. Then my wife and kid plant by hand. Do all the corn planting with a Ford two-row drill hooked to a Case VAC.
When the corn is a foot tall, we interplant squash, sunflowers, pumpkins, and polebeans. What the Indians use to call "Three Sisters." Beans help with nitrogen in the soil, and squash crowds out the weeds. Also makes it impossible to cultivate with a tractor later in the season.
By the way, that Case VAC is the best tractor I've ever owned. Not because of geat features. I say that because it's the only tractor I've ever owned that I didn't have to totally rebuild. It sat in the woods 30 years ago. Local farmer sold it to me because some kids had vandalized it. Paid $700 for it, with disks and plows. 30 years later, never done a thing to it except plugs and points. All original, and runs like a clock. Not very powerful, and no live PTO, but otherwise - a real workhorse for the price.
TO35 Deluxe with furrowers and IH B-275 with 5' tiller. This is an early B-275 with an air-governor and CAV inline injection pump.
"Newer" IH B-275 with CAV rotary pump and centrifugal governor, and el-cheap Canadian loader to lift fertilizer bags. Also has a big log splitter on back.
Case VAC with Ford two-row planter.
Wife, kid and dog planting potatoes. That along with my diesel-4WD "wheelbarrow", a 1985 Isuzu PUP minitruck. That little truck gets worked to death and keeps on going.
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