This corn right here ain't sick, but I'm about to heal it anyway. Recently, we've been having a lot of new subscribers and new people to the channel and they hear me say I'm going to hill something Hill potatoes, hill Tomatoes, hill corn and they think I'm going to make it better I'm going to cure it like something's wrong with it it's sick we got to heal it but that's not what I mean. I'm talking about hill H-I-L-L Now in my southern Dialect, h-i-l-l and h-e-a-l sound the same it all sounds the same in my head hill, heal And I guess if I was up north and I didn't have a southern accent I might say Hill and then heal and you would know the difference But I only know one way to talk and so when I say hill in the garden 99% of time I'm talking about throwing dirt to something. Now we hill plants in the garden for three main reasons The first one is plant stabilization and promoting better root structure throw more dirt around that plant you get the roots Growing even more than the normally would help stabilize the plant in the case with this corn here It's going to help a lot if we get some strong winds which might blow those stalks down So if we push some dirt up around those plants help stabilize those corn stalks. Reason number two is weed suppression So we can take our wheel hoe and our cultivating tools and keep the weeds under control between the rows pretty easily But among the rows or along the rows It can be a little tougher because we don't want to damage our plants So we have to be careful if we get in there with a hoe or a tool trying to remove those weeds So if we just throw dirt on top of them and smother those weeds along the row there That's a good way to do it without damaging the plants So weed suppression hilling goes together really well. And reason number three has to do with our fertilization. So We do like to inject fertilizers through our drip system But we also like to side dress with some granular fertilizer from time to time for that side dressing to be effective You really have to incorporate it into the soil or kind of cover it beside those plants So hilling is a good way to cover that fertilizer right beside those plants, so the roots can access it. So right here, we've got a 30 by 35 plot with 11 rows spaced 3 feet apart of our Avalon Triple Sweet Corn this is a white sweet corn and man this stuff grows quick comes up really good, germinates really good, grows fast super happy with how this stand of corn looks right now my Hoss Garden Seeder did an awesome job I haven't had to replant any skips or anything like that. These plants down here are About a foot tall if we pull those leaves all the way up the may be a little taller but about a foot tall and we did come in here and we planted them pretty thick but we came in here and thinned them out to about every 6 inches or So now keep in mind we have drip irrigation Underneath this row so we planted right on top of this buried drip tape here That means we can give them all the water they need right when they need it so that's how we can we can grow our sweet corn a little closer together if Irrigation and watering are an issue for you probably want to stretch these out closer to 8 to 12 inches apart But we've got plenty of water here, we can give it to them really good really quick with that drip irrigation And that's why we plant it so close together. So this corn here is pretty green It's not as green as I like it to be right when it's getting ready to make ears and produce but it's pretty green We gave it a couple shots of 20-20-20 and micro boost to the drip system We did that two or three times already So it's growing pretty good pretty fast And we're going to side dress it again today to give it some slow release a little more Nitrogen there corn is a heavy feeder It likes plenty of nitrogen and as dad always says You know how you get enough nitrogen to your corn is when you burn the tips of the leaves a little bit So we've still got a long way to go before that happens We got to keep feeding this stuff if we want a really good crop. So our preferred Fertilizer for side dressing corn is this stuff right here it says allganic nitrogen on the label But what it is is Chilean Nitrate you'll hear it also called sodium nitrate or Nitrate of soda a lot of the old timers you'll hear them call it Bulldog soda, they use to use a lot of tobacco plants back in the day. This is some real good stuff for fertilizing corn It's also organic so If your organic grower you can use this stuff it's armory registered it's 15 percent nitrogen Which is what we need to give that corn at this point, we've already give it some phosphorus and potassium With that 20-20-20 early on now We just kind of really want to focus on those nitrogen needs now A lot of people get caught up in how much do I use they get really worried They gonna put too much fertilizer or not enough fertilizer So I'm gonna kind of break it down pretty simple what I use here So this is a 10 pound bag of this And I've got a 30 by 35 plot of corn which is approximately a thousand square feet I may use a little more than 10 pounds, but let's just say if you've got a thousand square feet of corn, you know The standard spacing is three-foot rows thousand square feet of corn you want to put down 10 pounds of this side dressing now if you have 500 square feet of corn you put down five pounds if you only had 300 square feet of corn you could put down, you know 2.5 - 3 pounds, so just keep it simple Safe, you know 10 pounds per thousand square feet for that first side dressing and you should be good to go now before I turn The camera on today I came in here with my single wheel hoe and the cultivator teeth and Cultivated right alongside these rows here I had a little crust on the top of the soil there from some rain We got this weekend. So I came in here and cultivated that and that's going to help with the Side dressing and the plowing process give us some available dirt to throw up on those plants right there So I'm gonna pour some of this up in my little cup here that I used for side dressing There we go, we rip the zipper off, but that's alright because we're gonna use all of it. Alright And when you side dressing with this fertilizer here You got to be a little bit careful with what you're doing. You want to put it close enough to these corn stalks here So when you come along here, with your plow blade to hill it that it covers up that fertilizer You put it too far out here your plow blades are gonna miss it so you want to put it close enough so your plow blades can fold it in but you don't want to get none on these plants so you certainly Don't want to mess up and get one of those fertilizer granules down into that corn plant right there because it will burn them So we don't want to get it on the leaves, we're just going to get it right there snug up beside those stalks. We're just going to kind of Put it along there like that right there. Alright. Alright. Alright. We got our side dressing done ended up using about 12 pounds, sometimes it's hard You know on 11 rows to ration everything out perfectly so you get the 10 pounds over those 11 rows or thousand square feet. So we ended up using about 12 pounds but close enough 10 pounds would have been fine Just get it as close as we can ain't gonna hurt anything if there's a little extra there this corn can take it. So now it's hilling time Let me go grab my high arch wheel hoe and we're gonna get that set up for hilling this corn here. So I got my high arch wheel hoe here and I got my plow blades in the hilling position and they were set up Like this on that last video we did when we were hilling our tomato plants. With this high arch you can move these plows around you can put them way out wide here if you want to make a real wide hill or you can put them on in closer there if you wanna make a real Narrow hill with those tomatoes I had it probably about Right there and right there probably about middle of the way because those plants are a little wider these corn plants Are pretty narrow, they don't have a whole lot of you know spread foliage on them So we're gonna put them in pretty tight here and make a little tight hill You can also adjust the distance between these tool bars You could bring those in closer if you want to make it even tighter So we're going to put them right there and we're gonna tighten them down with our 9/16 wrench here my ole buddy Andy Webb says He likes our equipment because it's like a old Chevrolet you don't need but one size wrench to work on it while that ain't completely true cuz it takes a 7/16 to adjust the handles all the attachments do change with a 9/16 wrench. So we're gonna get these plows here and them carriage bolts cinch down good Some people like to use a impact driver but you don't have to you can get them plenty tight enough by hand With a wrench like this. Alright, they nice and tight And we good to go. What our ole high arch here It's going to allow us to do is to straddle these corn plants here and throw dirt Up on those plants on both sides in one pass there. We've got our drip tape here buried right underneath those corn plants so we ain't got to worry about these plows Messing with our drip tape at all it's good where it is. Now here we've got a 15-inch clearance on this guy So we could have waited that these got a little taller Before we hilled them, but we got some rain coming in tomorrow So I wanted to go ahead and get this done. You can do this with our standard double wheel hoe it has about a 5 inch - 6 inch clearance so you could probably come in here right now with the regular double wheel hoe and Hill these corn plants just fine with the high arch You got a little more leeway because you can let those plants get a little taller because you've got this 15 inch clearance right here. Now if that ain't pretty to you you might want to get your eyes checked Look a their nice hilled up rows of corn there. That ole plow set does the trick Throws that dirt right up on them stalks there smothers out them weeds Covers up our fertilizer and that corn will start making those little brace roots and grip it into the ground right there Help stabilize it in case we do get some crazy winds around here. Now if your corn plot ain't quite this big big enough to you know, justify using That wheel hoe there you can still hill it and you do still need to hill it you can do it with a rake or a hoe or Whatever tool you can find to be able to pull some dirt up onto those plants and you're still gonna want to side dress it if you can before you do that Since we've side dressed and hilled this corn we'll get some rain tomorrow and I'm telling you this stuff will pop Once it gets going you can stand outside and hear it growing. Now as far as weather, we'll need to fertilize it again I just kind of keep my eye on it I know how green my corn needs to be when it gets time to start making ears. You want it, you know, just dark dark Hunter green kind of leaf color on that corn there So if you don't green up quite as much as I want it to when it gets about knee-high or so We'll do this again, we'll put some more fertilizer down there we might not hill it up Again, we might just kind of cultivate it alongside the plants there but will just keep our eye on it. We want it real good Nice and green when it's time to start making those ears I've been seeing some pretty good looking corn plots out there from viewers like you guys and Members of our Row by Row gardening group on Facebook a lot of you guys are ahead of me I've seen some of you that got corn knee high already And then some of you up north are just chomping at the bit to get your corn planted So let me know kind of where you're at in the corn growing process You know Is it is it on up there and you're shooting the fertilizer to it or are you just getting ready to plant. I'll put some links below to any of the products we used or talked about in this video our Avalon corn seed, our Chilean Nitrate fertilizer, and our High Arch Wheel Hoe. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and that bell notification button If you haven't already if you enjoyed this video Give me a big thumbs up and check out these other two videos right here Ones we did in the past on healing other crops, I think you'll enjoy those as well. We'll see you next time.
