Planting corn

[JoePa]

I'm looking over the seed catalogs and thought that I would like to plant a half acrea of corn for wild life this year - mostly to attract deer in the Fall - I tried doing this several years ago but ended up with too many weeds growing up with the corn - also had a hard time keeping raccons and deer away while the corn was growing - here's my questions - what should I do to eliminate the weeds - I see the farmers corn fields around here hardly have any weeds - what can I use to get my corn field to look like theirs - I guess I would have to put up some fencing around the corn while it is still growing to keep the animals from eating it too early - thanks for any suggestions -

[Roadking]

We grow pumpkins and gourds amongst our corn. Raccoons like to be able to see their surroundings, but can't, so they leave our corn alone. Also the pumpkin and gourd vines, for us, keep the weeds down to a minimum.

Matt

[FarmerDavid]

Field corn or sweet corn? If you not opposed to chemicals atrizine is great for grass controll in corn. Our field corn gets atrizine and glyphosate and stays pretty cleen. A good multi strand electric fence would be my recommendation to keep it from getting eaten?

[FarmboyBill]

Also a cultivator can help. IF you don't own a tractor, planting the rows wide enough to get in between them with a walk behind garden tractor and cultivator will work.

Make you a sled, out of 2 X 6s. Make the runners as far apart as the rows you want your corn to be in. make as many runners as you want. Go across the field one way, leaving the tracks of the runners in the field. Try to pull it as straight as possible. THEn, when the entire field has been marked, do it again crossways of the first time.
Then plant your corn ONLY where the marks intersect. Plant 3 kernals at each X. This way, You can cultivate both directions, AND diagonally. That ought to keep your weeds down. Specially if you do it in a killing sign.

[FarmTechnician]

Dogs help keep critters out of the garden when they aren't digging it up for you. If you want to get high tech, you can place proximity sensors with noise and motion producers to scare away anything, but those require precious electricity, a dog is a dog.

With a No-Till method you are pretty much forced to either weed the whole field by hand or use chemicals. If you do till, a cultivator helps tremendously. You can use a chisel plow with slight modification to act as a cultivator for between row tillage. Getting inside the rows is next to impossible without robotics or hand weeding as you will till your own babies up!

I have 2 corn plants growing in 5 gallon buckets in the window in the middle of January....

[JoePa]

I guess I'll give RoundUp a try this year but I wonder if it is ok to use it in between the rows when the corn is growing - hand weeding is something I tried once before and man that's too hard - I can run a cultivator in between the rows but the weeds still grow in the corn rows - thanks for your thoughts -

[FarmboyBill]

As to your last, NOT NEAR SO MUCH I F YOU PLANT as I suggested, as you cultivate at least 3 different ways.

[DaleK]

You can spray roundup between the rows if you don't touch the corn, but even a half acre of corn is a heck of a lot to spray by hand. What equipment do you have? You might be better off going with alfalfa or something more perennial, and a smaller pumpkin patch

[OH Boy]

find some roundup ready corn seed then you can spray it to control the weeds. I got mine at Rural King last year. If you know any farmers who grow corn ask if you can buy a little seed from them.

[big rockpile]

I have Planted Corn with Red Clover in it. Did good for 3 years.

big rockpile

[rambler]

The key to controlling weeds in corn is to do so when you don't really see any yet.. If the weeds are 4 inches high, you are way too late.

You can drag or harrow as the corn is breaking through the surface.

Hoe or cultivate every week after that. You want to be killing little white rooted weedlings not identifiable weeds. Kill them early.

Several sprays work well when the corn is ankle high, some kill broad leaves ( like 24D) and some kill grasses.

You can use roundup between the rows but don't get any at all on the corn plants. That can be a challenge.

Or if you use roundup ready corn seed you can spray the whole patch.

Paul

[idigbeets]

^^ Called a stale seed bed. We use it all the time here on our organic farm. work the ground up, let it sit for a few days, come back and lightly disc it again (key is to stay in the top couple inches), wait again... usually 2 passes and there will be very few weeds left. Now.. if you are roto-tilling... good luck... lol.