I'm Ron Patterson with Utah State University Extension in Carbon County.
Today we're going to plant some corn.
Corn on the cob is one of those late summer treats that everybody enjoys, so we're going
to show some things that we can do to make a good successful crop of corn.
I've measure out here - I've got a good straight line for my corn so I can get it planted in
a straight line - that's...always like to have good straight lines.
And then also I've measured out from this fence line two feet; your rows between the
corn...probably...the best spacing is about 30 inches between the rows.
Within the row, you want your corn plants to be about nine to twelve inches apart.
You get them any closer than that, you'll reduce your yields, any father away from that
then...then you'll have...probably good yields, but...less efficient use of your space.
Another thing about corn is that it pollinates from above and drops down below so for the
best pollination, if you can have four rows of corn, is better than say three, two, or
one row of corn.
You can still get pollination, but you get better pollination if you have four rows of
corn in your corn patch.
So I'll show you how we'll make the furrow; planting corn can be easy or hard depending
on the toys-tools- that you happen to have to use.
So we'll make a furrow and do it by hand, if you have a small patch, show you different
ways to do it.
All right so to make a furrow, just use the corner of your hoe, follow your line, however
long a line you're going to make.
That's a pretty quick and easy way to make a furrow.
Another tool, if you're into tools and gadgets it's kinda fun, is this little wheel cultivator;
you can take that in there.
Now while we can see that there's a fair amount of moisture in this soil right now, we get
some good spring winds here in southeastern Utah that can dry this topsoil out real fast,
so I want to make sure that I've got good moisture down there for my seed so that it
will germinate and emerge in good shape.
Now corn is a really pretty tough seedling; you plant it about an inch deep in the soil
and it'll come up - that coleoptile and that cotyledon will come up and do quite well.
It can tolerate a fair amount of frost early in the season, so you can plant it, probably
early May and still be pretty successful with your corn.
Once that growing plate gets up above the ground when that freezes, your corn is done.
So while the...while the seedling is down low, and you don't have that extension up
below the soil surface, you can...you can tolerate a little bit of frost and it'll do
okay.
You can also plant corn fairly late; around our country you want to have a growing season
corn of probably less than 90 days just to be safe.
I will plant corn on the fourth of July just to have a late crop, and I haven't failed
yet, but that's a big risk to plant corn that late.
So you want to have it planted by the first of June anyway to have a good corn crop and
to enjoy that corn on the cob in August or September.
All right, so corn, basically you're going to plant one seed at a time every nine to
twelve inches - get it down there in the bottom of the furrow - if you get it planted a little
thick you can always thin them out when they pop up later.
Doesn't take a lot of corn and you get a pretty good yields off of it; of course it's depending
on the variety you like - this is an 82-day corn - so in about twelve weeks I'll have...have
me some corn on the cob, maybe put some in the freezer.
So I've got my corn planted, I'm just going to cover it up now...use my hoe...cover it
up about an inch of soil on there.
Use the hoe to kinda tamp it down; depending on how muddy your soil is, you don't want
to tamp too hard.
You get good soil contact with that seed; ensure better germination and emergence.
This is an old corn planter that I inherited from my dad, who inherited it from his dad,
so it's actually a pretty old piece of technology.
Nice thing about it is I don't have to bend over to do planting.
There are some disadvantages to it in that I'm going to have - I may have to water my
corn up.
Also, I tend to get a few more seeds at each location than I want to so I'll have to thin
this crop out, but I can get a lot of corn planted pretty quick this way.
It's a little bit of a labor-saver, and...at least in planting season, and it's kind of
a fun toy to have.
You can get these, probably, I think you can get similar tools at your garden centers or
online, so it's a technology that's still around.
This little planter is kind of another fun little toy; it's got some problems that I
figured out how to work around.
It's got a wheel in it that drops the seeds at a regular spacing... and I'll show you
that wheel in just a minute.
But there can be some...multiple seeds again at each planting so we may end up with more
seeds than we want in a particular spot.
I'll show you how this little toy works: it's got a...a wheel that fits in here and it'll
drop - it'll pick up the seeds - and drop it around.
The problem you run into is inside here, if you put a whole bunch of seeds in there, they
tend to bind up on that washer and pops.
You'll be popping seeds out or the washer won't be turning, the...the disk won't be
turning, so to get around that I keep the - I just put in a little bit of seed at a
time, and I keep the seed on the backside of this washer, so that the disk will come
around and it doesn't bind up here in front of the washer.
So you just kinda have to keep track of it and it actually...it works pretty good if
you do it that way; if you try to fill that hopper full, it's kind of a pain to work with,
but if you're into toys, corn is a good way to go.
So there you have it: another fun way to play in your garden.