Growing corn non GMO style?

[Farmerboy16]

Hi all, not sure if this is the right place to post, if this is not the right place please direct me to the right place. Thanks.

Anyway, my neighbor lets me use part of his field to plant corn to feed my poultry flock, and this year, I want to plant non-GMO corn. All other neighbors have wheat in their fields, so, no fear of cross-pollination. I have access to GMO-free seeds, but my question is how do I grow it without using round-up and being overrun with weeds that corn can't grow and produce well? Thanks for any help! I plan to plant about 4 to 5 acres of corn.

[Forerunner]

Find an old 2 or four row cultivator, tractor mounted....... or get your hands calloused up now for hoeing.

[MichaelK!]

Simply designate a couple hour block of time each and every day of the week to go through and weed it. After several weeks straight, start to re-evaluate your insistance on non-GMO corn.

[ksfarmer]

Therein lays the popularity of RR corn.

[farmerDale]

A person could always spray a pre emergent soil applied herbicide, a shot or two of nasty, stick in your chest herbicide, or one of those herbicides that kill all insects by the time you come back on the second pass. A person could till the soil, breaking it down, and wearing it out over time.

Or a person could use roundup.

[bruce2288]

There are over herbicides to use other than round up. If that is not an option. You will need to till the soil just before planting to kill any germinated weeds. If you are not going to use herbicides you probably want to plant later, so the growing conditions are optimal for the corn. You want it to germinate and grow quickly. A rotary hoe was a valuable implement before herbicides, but only works for very small, almost can't see them weeds.

If I was going to grow corn with no herbicides here would be my plan

Disk to control weeds before they get tooo big.
Disk or field cultivate again the day before planting
Plant
7-10 days later rotary hoe
7-10 days later rotary hoe
cultivate when posible and hope the corn is bigger than the weeds
cultivate just before the corn shades row

The trouble with plans is they don't always work. If it is too wet to hoe or cultivate the weeds may outgrow the corn. Then when you can cultivate, to move enough dirt to bury weeds in row you cover the corn.

These six tillage operations will take fuel, time and lose a lot of moisture out of the ground. There are valid reasons why farmers use herbicides and not because they arre lazy or enjoy giving money to chemical companies.

Without eqipment, hand hoeing is your option and I can guarentee that the 4 acres will seem like 20 when you are done.

[salmonslayer]

We only grow 1/4 to 1/2 acre of heirloom corn and do hand cultivating and it about wears us out. After the corn gets big enough we basically just cultivate down the middle of the rows mechanically then weed the bigger weeds out and let the rest go.

[rambler]

1. conventional herbicides work fine with non-gmo corn, if herbicides don't bother you.

2. Delay planting, harrow to kill the weed flush, plant, harrow to kill the weed flush as the corn breaks ground, cultivate every 7 days for 3 weeks, walk the field for the tough weeds between rows, live with a few weeds. There is much much timing and knowledge to this, not as easy as it sounds...

3. If a small patch, walking the field with a hoe works, but if you don't realize what you are in for, this is not going to work, there are many weeds coming up often, you will have blisters.....

Paul

[DaleK]

Lots of spray options depending what weeds you have, when you want to spray,etc. I usually use Battalion, which is Elim + Banvel II + Dual II Magnum, at spike-2 leaf stage.

[Maura]

Just a thought, plant a really old variety of corn, and the variety you are planning on. You will get less bushels per acre on the old variety. But, experiment with your chickens and see how much they need to eat of each kind.

[haypoint]

While you get away from that GMO corn, you also give up that new fangled "no till" plan. Can't have dead weeds and crop residue protecting the surface of the soil if you run a cultivator through it every week or so.
You could put down a mat of clean, weed seed free wheat straw between the rows to suppress weeds and help protect the soil after you cultivate. But you'd need to gather it up when it was time to cultivate.

Roundup Ready is one facet of GMO. Getting away from the GMO Bt version means you'll either spray insecticides for corn borer or rootworm or accept the loses and damage.

The cultivator and the hoe can rid your field of production robbing weeds, but it is hard to do it without damaging the corn's roots and leaves, ultimately affecting yields.

[FarmboyBill]

You dont say how many acres/ft your useing. If big enough to use a tractor and plow,
Do all these things by the right sign.

plow it, disc it, harrow it. If it dont look smooth enough, harrow it again. Rollar pack it if you can use one of those. Plant it. Wait till its 4in up then run a harrow, or rotery hoe through it. Do this once a week till the corns around 8in high. THEN use a cultivator of some kind. Use it till your bending the stalk, once a week, in a killing sign. IF you can find a horse or mule, a donkey, ect. Find an old wheel the dia of the width of the rows of your corn. make a flat place on one side, stand on it and drag the wheel through the field. This will again kill out any weeds, AND hill up the rows.

[sammyd]

atrazine and prowl....

[DaleK]

Originally Posted by sammyd

atrazine and prowl....

"Hey, who painted the field yellow?"

[Fire-Man]

Originally Posted by Farmerboy16

Hi all, not sure if this is the right place to post, if this is not the right place please direct me to the right place. Thanks.

Anyway, my neighbor lets me use part of his field to plant corn to feed my poultry flock, and this year, I want to plant non-GMO corn. All other neighbors have wheat in their fields, so, no fear of cross-pollination. I have access to GMO-free seeds, but my question is how do I grow it without using round-up and being overrun with weeds that corn can't grow and produce well? Thanks for any help! I plan to plant about 4 to 5 acres of corn.

I do a last disc and smooth(piece dragging behing the disc) and plant that day. I plant using 2 planters setup on 26 1/2 row centers with my standard 53" tractor tire spacing. When the corn gets a few inches tall I cultivate it slowly so I do not cover up any. When it gets a little taller I cultivate it again tilting the sweep points deeper and driving a little faster. When it gets about 12 to 14" tall I spread Granular Nitrogen and cultivate right behind it--again tilting the sweep points down and going faster. When the corn is at a height that I feel is as tall as I can drive over it----I cultivate it its last time. By doing the 26 1/2" rows there is no corn under the belly of the tractor so I can wait a little later to do the last cultivating. Also having the rows closer together shades the rows faster. Because of planting close like this I do add a little extra fertilizer, lime and Nitrogen per acre.

[uncle Will in In.]

BILL <> I know you are big on antique farm tools. Use an old planter with a check wire. Now you can put the the two row cultivators on your H Farmall.
Cultivate it both ways with the fenders adjusted to cover the little weeds around both sides of each hill. Your neighbors never heard of round up when you were a country Lad.

Keep on hoeing

[haypoint]

Originally Posted by uncle Will in In.

BILL <> I know you are big on antique farm tools. Use an old planter with a check wire. Now you can put the the two row cultivators on your H Farmall.
Cultivate it both ways with the fenders adjusted to cover the little weeds around both sides of each hill. Your neighbors never heard of round up when you were a country Lad.

......back when 60 bushels to the acre was a state record.

[FarmboyBill]

Ive never seen a working check row planter, my dad said he had never seen a working check row planter, and he said that grandad never had a check row planter.
I got the cultivators for the CC Case. I also got a 2 row IHC horse cultivator, which I used before I got the Case cultivators a few times.

[haypoint]

Originally Posted by FarmboyBill

Ive never seen a working check row planter, my dad said he had never seen a working check row planter, and he said that grandad never had a check row planter.
I got the cultivators for the CC Case. I also got a 2 row IHC horse cultivator, which I used before I got the Case cultivators a few times.

But you know how they work. Right?

There is a wire chain that trips the planter at even spacing. When you start the next row, the chain is set to drop seed in the same space as the previous row. So, when you are all done, you can cultivate along the rows and across the row, north and south, plus east and west. Didn't need GMO and Roundup, just needed to grow corn spaced three feet apart both ways.

[rambler]

The Case 3pt 4 row planter dad (and I) used well into the 1980s had a check row option, and the spiral for the winder was on it. We never used it for check planting, but I think all that was needed would have been the wire.....

Dad hill dropped with it, the roller arm wore out so he disabled that feature.

Paul