How to Grow Corn - Complete Growing Guide

well hello everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the mi gardener channel wow it is a hot one today the uh the thermometer just peaked past 95 degrees the heat index is at 105 so it is a hot one so it's gonna be a quick one today we're gonna be doing a corn growing guide so a lot of you have requested it and in fact it's probably one of the most highly requested complete growing guides so we're going to do it in uh in about as short as time as possible because i want to get this one out so the reason why i waited this long till the heat uh you know to the heat came was because corn first off needs very warm soil temperatures you can't plant corn in anything below around 60 degrees if the soil temperature is really below 50 degrees you're going to have rod and that's a big problem that plagues a lot of gardeners is they plant seeds and then they think that the corn seed is bad or that they have poor germination rates and it's just because the they put it in cool soil so you need to wait until the soil turns warm they always say knee high by the fourth of july that's because if you get it in most farmers around here uh just got their corn in last week so we're a little late but we've been so busy that uh today today was the day that i decided to put it in and wow i think it's warm enough for corn i think it's plenty warm enough for corn in fact um so either way the soil is nice and warm the next thing we did is we went and we we went ahead and we pre-soaked seeds now pre-soaking basically hydrates the seed because in when you plant seeds in a warm soil generally that's after the wet season is over so spring most of the rain has already kind of come and gone now we're almost kind of in what we consider the dry season here and so we need to pre-soak our seed to give them the best chance of germinating so here we've pre-soaked our seeds for eight hours we took a just a glass of water here and we put in our seeds and we just let them soak what that's going to do like i said it's the seeds because they start out kind of shriveled they're going to absorb that that water that would normally be in the soil and might not be there now and it's going to give you a better chance at success now for a large scale garden this wouldn't really be possible and you kind of just uh base you know what you do on the law of averages you plant let's say 100 seeds and even you know just in an unsoaked seed you're going to get between 70 and 80 germination which is pretty good if you're planting out several hundred square feet in our case here we have a 10 by three beds we have 30 square feet here and so we need the highest germination rate possible because we can't go back and replant seed like you could in a larger scale because they're just too crowded in and once one starts growing up in this block we have here it'll really shade out the rest so we're going to space them closer together than we would normally and so we're going to about half the spacing so traditional spacing would be about every six inches we're going to space ours about every three inches and then if we go back if we have to go back in thin we will do so and that allows us to still have a margin of error that if some don't sprout we'll have a good amount to choose from so we have a good solid block because that's the next thing to growing corn that you need to know is that you can't just grow one straight row you can't grow just a couple seeds in a pot you just won't have good germination or you won't have good pollination i should say so the the corn is air pollinated or wind pollinated and when the wind blows it blows the tassels and that knocks pollen throughout the air that will land on the silks of the corn and if you've ever seen corn that's very sparse and only has a few kernels here and there and it looks very patchy and and not pleasant to eat well that's because of a pollination issue each silk goes back to a kernel and so each silk has to be pollinated by a by a piece of pollen falling from the tassels so that's why we wouldn't plant them in a block the minimum that you should be planting your corn is in a four by four block that's four feet by four feet that means in 16 square feet of corn you really need to have at least that much to have good quality pollination anything less than that i can't guarantee you're going to have good results so the next thing i want to talk about is fertilizing like i said we tr we fertilize with trifecta plus and trifecta plus is a 510 for it means it has good amounts of nitrogen good amounts of phosphorus and good amounts of potassium but the number we're really concerned about is the nitrogen trifecta plus focuses on fast-acting nitrogen as well as slow release nitrogen which is going to feed the corn all season long corn is actually a grass believe it or not and grass its main function is leaf production and the uh and the corn that is that's produced is actually a byproduct you actually need to have in order to have good corn good ear development you need to have tall corn because those leaves are what generates the energy so that requires a lot of nitrogen because the corn actually comes after the plant reaches full maturity so if your plant does not reach full maturity you're not going to have fully sized corn calves and that's where you get the little dinky cobs or the misshapen cobs things like that so it is imperative that you provide enough nitrogen and i always say that it's better to apply too much nitrogen than too little because if you're applying an organic source of nitrogen it can't be too much if you're applying something like synthetic like like a really high like a 50 0-0 or something like that i'd recommend not doing that first and foremost because it's not organic and number two is because you can burn that's why i always err on the side of organic because you know organic you can never over apply it so make sure you load on the nitrogen and other good sources of nitrogen are blood meal or things like fish emulsion those are great sources of nitrogen you can also apply things like chicken manure and things like that just make sure it's well aged and you're going to have good amounts of nitrogen but again like i said here on our plot we use trifecta plus for everything and so that's what we went ahead and used the next thing that i want to talk about is watering watering is so important if you've ever seen corn i'll see if i can post a picture get kind of brown and bronzy colored around the edges that's a lack of water corn is a very drought tolerant crop in fact that's why it's been grown in mexico as they're kind of their staple crop because it's very drought tolerant however it does have its limits to drought tolerance it does need water about once a week otherwise it will begin to wither especially if you're not growing especially if you're growing a corn that is like a sweet corn which is what we're growing if you're growing like a flint corn or a flower corn that's going like a grinding corn that can handle even less water but because we want really plump kernels and we don't want to be starchy and chewy we want to make sure that the corn is well hydrated so we water once a week our corn and that seems to do just fine so we're just going to apply the fertilizer and when we apply trifecta plus we like to just broadcast it because we are not going on a bi-plant basis when we are direct sowing our seed it's important to broadcast it so that the fertilizer can be evenly incorporated in the soil and have a better chance at coming in contact with the plant roots and then we just want to work that in i just lightly fluffed the top one inch of the seed bed to allow for good soil contact and so now i'm just fluffing it into that top one inch and obviously once i plant my seeds i'm going to water it in thoroughly and that's going to allow the trifecta plus to work its way down into the soil column and start working right away so like i said i'm going to direct sow my seed and when i do i'm going to create rows and i'm going to simply plant my seed like i said about double the spacing that i would normally so instead of every six inches i'm going to plant it every two or every three inches and that's just going to ensure that i have good germination rates and if i have to go back and thin i can now with corn you do want to provide a really deep soil bed sometimes i see gardeners planting in raised beds that are only about four inches high or they're growing it in soil that's very compacted corn is one of the crops you need really good fluffy soil because corn does not have a deep root system you'll find that often corn will push itself out of the soil that's why corn falls over a lot if you have if you have soil that's not really loose one thing that'll happen is in high winds or high rain it will fall over that's because soil is a lot like pine trees you know pine trees have such a shallow root system and so do corn and they're so susceptible to falling over and once they fall over and the stem gets pinched they're pretty much done so another thing too is when we planted a block like this the corn is going to self kind of almost self-support itself even if we do get a really heavy rain or really heavy wind and we do have about 12 to 14 inches of really good loose soil in here it's going to allow the roots to go down deep and establish themselves to anchor themselves in so that they're not getting blown over but even if they do happen to get blown over a little bit they'll they'll fall onto another corn growing up to not allow it to fall as far and you might be able to save it now one thing with corn is you do have to be aware that it does require a little bit longer to mature than some of your other crops if you're in zones four three or two you're going to have a difficult time growing corn because it requires about 85 to 90 days to mature and so i think it's just really important to understand that that you know unfortunately there are depending where you live there are some crops that are just more difficult to grow or almost near impossible to grow and just keep that in mind that if you don't have a long enough growing season it's best i mean you can always try it and you never know but it's also sometimes best if you want to guarantee success to grow crops you can guarantee better results with corn you would really be rolling the dice even here in zone six where we're at we'll have corn by around mid to late august and that means that for those that start getting cooler temperatures around late august you're going to obviously need the warmer temperatures to ripen the corn and to allow for good sweet corn otherwise you're going to have very starchy corn in cold weather the final thing i want to talk about was sunlight requirements corn is one of those crops you just cannot or should never skimp on sunlight we're going to be giving these corn about eight to ten full sun hours and that means they're getting direct sun if you give them any less than around seven hours they're really going to struggle again corn is a grass and all of those corn leaves are what is photosynthesizing to make your corn sweeter obviously with it being sugar corn or sweet corn so it needs to build up the sugars that is created through photosynthesis also because it is a grass that's how it generates energy to grow just to even grow more leaves so you need to allow for lots and lots of sunlight if they're in a part of the garden that is going to get around four to five hours just honestly it's one of those crops again i always say this it's best to just know what you can't grow right off the bat because if you get four to five hours you're just not going to have success there's just you can't it's not one of those things that you can gamble with you just won't have success also another final note too about soil ph i was just remembering i always go through in growing guides corn really enjoys a neutral ph if your corn if your soil is very acidic or very alkaline it's going to be negatively affected we have amended this with trifecta plus but the bed is solely pure compost meaning that the compost is going to neutralize any acidity found in trifecta plus when it comes to fertilizing and it's going to bring it back to a ph of 7. it's very very important that you have a compost base because compost is a natural neutralizer for anything you put in your bed and that's going to bring it back to a ph of 7 that corn will absolutely love and that's why a lot of farmers will apply lime in their in the beginning of their uh growing season or their or they will apply sulfur if their soil is too alkaline they're attempting to bring their soil to a ph of seven or around seven so that they can have better success and so that is everything there is to growing corn i hope you enjoyed this complete growing guide i wish you the best of luck with it and we will definitely keep you all updated as it grows and when it comes time to harvesting if you'd like to see us harvesting some corn we grew at our cottage garden i'd recommend checking out a link that i'll post in the description box below it is truly amazing i'll also post a card to it because it is something that i think everyone should check out to see really truly how this growing guide will will result in very successful corn it was some of the most amazing corn we've ever grown it was really delicious and since then we've been wanting to record again but it's it is a crop that does take up quite a lot of space so it's something we sometimes will grow sometimes we won't and and that just that fired me up to grow it this year again because i love sweet corn it is just a great crop to eat both raw and cooked and it is so delicious so i hope you all enjoyed i hope you learned something new and also for those that have stayed to the end of this video thank you i want to remind you all to give this video a huge thumbs up it really does help i know it seems something super nominal is just a thumbs up but youtube wants to see you engaging with this video and if i did a good job of helping you grow corn better or help answer some questions you might have that is definitely you know the least that you could do is just give me a thumbs up because uh you know it it does help spread our video around to people that have not yet seen it and also if you've not yet subscribed that'd be a great time to do it we're going daily or we've been going daily for about a month now and that means daily content helping you grow bigger go home grow more food and having more fun doing it so i really do hope that you've enjoyed and as always this is luke from the mi gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home i'll catch you all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 756,343

Keywords: fertilizing corn, complete, growing corn, easy, home grown, ez, quick tip, beginning garden, beginning gardener, Premiere_Elements_15, guide, howto, migardener, walkthrough, how-to, growing, tutorial, simple, garden tip, complete growing guide, harvesting corn, how to grow corn, step by step, corn, how to

Id: ZglIV6e4jFY

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Tue May 29 2018