3 Easy Steps to Grow Tasty Sweet Corn in Your Backyard!

and then we have step three which kind of has a asterisk beside it because this step may or may not be necessary just depending what's up Lazy Dog fam hope all yall are having a wonderful day it is Thursday May 2nd here in South Georgia and on today's video we're going to be working in the sweet corn patch here behind me and I'm going to give you a really simple three-step fertility plan to grow some awesome sweet corn corn in your backyard so before we get over there to the corn let's talk about what else we have growing in this plot we had some extra Braska transplants laying around a month or so ago and I just threw them in the ground here didn't feel real optimistic about it and as you can see they're not looking great we may leave a few of those we may just scrap those in the next few weeks got some lettuce over there that's hanging on some of it starting to bolt we really need to start chipping away at that that red lettuce on the end there is looking really nice though and then over here we've got six double rows of Nirvana sweet corn that we planted back in early April got really good germination on this stand here a few of the stalks are leaning a little bit cuz we had a bad storm a few days ago but it's starting to stand back U right now some of y'all may recall last year with our sweet corn planting we had a bad army worm attack once it got up and going and they were chewing down our corn like crazy we were able to get that under control with some spinosad so that was something I was keeping a close eye on this year haven't seen any worm damage yet but I'm prepared to tackle that problem if it arises now when we planted this corn and I was going through all the pros and cons of this double row planting technique with the drip tape down the center of the double rows I told you that you don't want to do this in a spot with really heavy weed pressure cuz it can be tougher to weed this corn when it's planted on double rows like this now once these corn plants get a little taller they will actually shade out this Center area right here in the middle of the double row we don't have to worry about weeds a whole lot there but early on we do have to worry about weeds between these corn plants here and we don't want them to get too out of control yes the healing process that we're going to do later today we'll smother out some of them but I've had to do couple rounds of some really delicate weeding just to keep things under control initially so I'm coming through here with my little single time cultivator and just delicately working around these corn plants trying to get rid of some of those small weeds got it looking pretty clean now this process it's delicate and every now and then I will clip a corn plant you can see one right there that I got the other day it's okay we still have plenty left here but I wanted to get this under control before we did did what we're going to do today so now let's talk about fertility sweet corn is one of the most hungry and thirsty plants that you can grow in a backyard garden we've got the Thirsty part handled with the drip tape there but we're going to need to take care of that hungry part today and I'm going to give you a really simple plant now I'm not going to give specific amount recommendations today I don't really like doing that because everybody's soil is different some people have to fertilize a lot more than others just depending on what type of soil you have and what things you've done to that soil to kind of build it up over the years so let's get into our three-step plan now step one we've already done and that's to put down a relatively balanced fertilizer at planting we use Coupe grow if you want to be organic you could also use something like the nature safe 855 or another relatively balanced granular organic fertilizer and if you don't care about being organic you can go with something like 10 10 10 or 1313 13 something with equal or relatively equal percentages of nitrogen phosphorus and potassium so that's step one which we've already done now step two is what we're going to do today and that's to give the corn just some straight nitrogen now we're going to be using some nature safe 1300 you could use sodium nitrate you could use ammonium nitrate there's a lot of different nitrogen sources out there a lot more synthetic nitrogen options than there are organic nitrogen options but there are plenty out there to choose from and so in a minute to take care of this second step will be side dressing both of these double rows with some of that nature safe 13000 and then covering it up with soil as we heal those corn plants and then we have step three which kind of has a asterisk beside it because this step may or may not be necessary just depending on your soil conditions and how much fertility you've built up in that soil so for step three when our corn grows a little more and gets about knee high we want to add another round of nitrogen same stuff we use in step two we would use the nature say 130 0 so we'd end up giving it two rounds of nitrogen one in step two when it's about you know 12 to 18 in tall and then another round in step three when it's about knee high now I have found that sometimes I can get away with skipping that third fertilization that has a lot to do with my girls and the chicken tractor back there so if I've had the chicken tractor on a plot before we plant corn and we had it on this plot for a good while before we turned over that cover crop and got it ready to plant corn I've had that chicken tractor on there a while I've got a lot of nitrogen I've got a lot of nutrients built up there and I may not need that third fertilization but if my corn isn't dark green when it gets about knee high it doesn't look as good as I think it should look I ain't scared to give it some more nitrogen and take care of that third step so if you use a lot of manure in your garden if you mix a lot of manure into the soil before you plant you may not need that third step just keep a close eye on your corn let the color of the leaves tell you if it needs another round of nitrogen or not you may be able to skip it you may want to just play it safe and give some to it anyways so just a recap balanced fertilizer at planting n nen at 12 to 18 in tall and then more nitrogen if you need it at knee high that's the simple easy corn fertilization plan if you follow that you should grow some pretty nice corn now as a side note to that Simple Plan let me mention this if you plant your corn it germinates it gets up and going and when it's about 12 to 18 in tall like this corn behind me is and those leaves are light green and not dark green that is your sign that you don't have much fertility in your soil and that you're probably going to have to fertilize more than normal but this corn behind me is green enough for my liking at this stage in the game which tells me we do have a decent amount of fertility built up in that soil which we should using the chicken tractor like we have on this plot but that's just something to monitor use your eyes let your eyes tell you what that corn needs you want it to be as dark green as possible if it's not help it out so that's our plan now let's carry out step two on this beautiful Nirvana corn and I told yall we were going to be using the nature safe 1300 which we've used a lot in the past with great success my buddy Mark brought me a few bags of this stuff yesterday now this is the same analysis as we've used in the past 1300 but this stuff is a little different notice down here it says coarse instead of pelleted so the nature safe 1300 that we've used in previous years was in pelleted form looked a lot like that Coupe grow that you see us use all the time although the nature safe pets weren't quite as dark this right here looks a lot different this looks more like chicken scratch but as far as I can tell it's the same stuff it just looks a little different has the same ingredients feather meal meat meal and blood meal and a little bit of amle nitrogen to give that corn quick little if you're in the south Georgia or north Florida areas and want to get your hands on some of this stuff grayco fertilizer over in the big city of kro Georgia just got a big shipment of the nature safe 1300 and the 855 so you can head over there pick some up don't have to worry about paying some crazy online shipping charges make sure you tell them Trav at Lazy Dog Farm sent you now when you're side dressing corn with a synthetic fertilizer you got to be really really careful not to get any of those pellets or granules down in that corn plant because it will burn them and can kill them you don't have to be as careful with the organic stuff but I like to be careful just in case so when I'm sprinkling this alongside the row here I'll lean down and we just get it right alongside those plants here so it'll be covered up when we heal them I'm going to use an entire scoop here down each side of this double row okay so we got all six of those double rows side dressed on each side now just a little nugget before we heal this corn and cover that fertilizer if you're side dressing with synthetic fertilizers be prepared for a little bit of a weed boom after you do it because those nutrients in the synthetic fertilizers are so available those weeds can grab them real quick and Thrive now I'm not here to preach organic versus synthetic fertilizers you use what you want to use just know if you're using synthetics be prepared for a little bit of a weed pop now one of the downsides to this double Road technique for me at least is that I can't heal it with the wheel ho and even if I had a little tractor this plot's too small to get a tractor in anyway so going to have to do it by hand me and old Manuel here going to go down the side of each row knock it out we just want to cover up that fertilizer get some nice support up on those stock talks there so that was a good little workout but that's all right little manual labor ain't never hurt nobody I didn't get to go to the gym this morning cuz Brooklyn had court this morning so we just make it up out here and so that's what we want it to look like not healed up super tall not healed as high as we heal ters but good enough and so that healing process serves several purposes of course it's going to cover the fertilizer like we talked about it's also going to suppress some of those weeds just by smothering them with more soil it's also going to help stabilize our corn plants and make them a little less likely to get blown down should we get a heavy storm it's not going to make the corn plants impervious to wind I've seen healed corn plants get blown down too but it will help a little bit long as we don't get a crazy wild storm so I hope you enjoyed the video today and let me know in the comments below if you're an experienced corn grower how many rounds of nitrogen you usually give to your corn and if you want to know more about this double row planting technique all the pros and cons of it watch this video and we'll explain all that so check that out we'll see you next time right here at Lazy Dog Farm

Channel: Lazy Dog Farm

Views: 10,238

Keywords: backyard gardening, organic gardening, sustainable living, vegetable gardening, vegetable garden, homestead, homesteading, homestead garden, organic food, small farm, sustainable agriculture, home garden, sustainable farming, sustainable food, organic garden, backyard garden, home gardening, garden advice, garden tips, garden techniques, gardening tips, garden seeds, garden varieties, gardening, garden, how to garden, grow your own food, kitchen garden, clean food

Id: 0SFw-5riMR0

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024