Help------Corn Farmers

I rotate my pig pasture. Put them on the grassy stuff ( cover crop) when it is there or just on the stubble. When I move them off seed let it grow then plow under or run them back on it. It depends on the season and ground cover. Section your area off into 1 acr plots and rotate. Any way you do it it will be great for the soil. I love my pigs. My bantom corn was 9 feet tall and big juicy ears of corn. The bantom should have only reached 5 feet.lol gotta love pig poop.

My pigs are my clearing crew they remove stumps no good grasses and weeds. THey are my fertilizers. Muck and turning the soil real nice. I just smoothe and plant. Yes it takes more time but I have healthy happy pigs and No chemicals go into my ground. Not to mention I have a waiting list for my meat.

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I'm so done here.

Is Conway in South Carolina??????????? !5 miles from Myrtle Beach.If you didn't get much rain you probably have a lot of fertilizer in the ground that wasn't used I would plant it in corn again.

Begin with the soil. Is it friable, or is it wet in spots and therefore compressed in spots? If it is compressed, root development will be poor and the ability to take up N will be hampered. Deep till compressed spots or plant a legume there with long tap roots.

If the soil is wet, and not compressed, drainage is the obvious answer.

Get a soil test for NPK reccomendations.

If weeds were tall enough, even if spotty in places, they could have kept the tassle pollen from falling on the corn silk. There is a critical 14-day window for this to happen.

Also, rootworm adults (which are green beetles) will eat tassles and silks preventing pollination and you will get ears but none or few kernals of corn.

But it sounds more like a fertilization problem. Since you aren't organic, and anyhydrous is not available, try granulated urea, but it must be tilled or irrigated in.

As someone mentioned previously, you can do everything right but if the weather won't cooperate, its out of your hands.

It takes a lot of fertilizer to make corn grow. I've never heard of broadcasting fertilizer... around here, folks put it under and around the row, below the soil...

You cannot have any predators eating your corn... Large acreages aren't affected much, cause the predators eat on the fringes.... small acreages are completely accessible, and they eat a whole lot more than you can imagine. I've had single acres completely cleaned out. Two acres of corn wasn't worth the time, cause the final crop would be hit in green corn stage, all the way to dry stage. I'd say >5 acres would be the minimum.

Kill the coons, possums, scare off the deer and crows.

General rule is to plant 4x more than you need.... 1 for the varmints, 1 for the weather, 1 for neighbors, and 1 for yourself. If you have too much production, no problem, too little, you still have enough for yourself.

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

A few things come to mind.
Corn is like mice they both like to go where they have gone before so a few years of continuus corn might be a good thing.
Planting date is critacal... for a few reasons . The amount of growing time is important. the time when it silks is critacal if its to hot the pollen wont take. If the stand is spotty and uneven there may not be enough pollen in the air when the corn silks needs it.
Feild size affects that too.
Small feilds have more edge if they are in an open area thats good but if they are surronded by trees thats bad from a point of veiw of shade and moisture.
Drainage and compaction could both count whats the feild been used for in the past? does the rain soak in evenly or are there wet places?

Type and verity of seed can make much bushels of corn diffrnece,

Some can very by many bushels even with in the seed company. Some are for different zones and soils and locations, at one time Pioneer and they had a number that was only sold in about 100 square miles in our area, here it worked wonders and else where it was not a good seed.

Ok gang, I see we have some corn experts on board, I have a question if someone reads and can enlighten me.

Been hand harvesting some field corn this week. I have 40 rows that are approximately 850 feet long. I have picked 7 complete rows (33 to go yet). I have picked 168 5-gallon buckets full of shucked ears of corn. How many bushels do I have of ear corn and what would that translate to shelled corn?

My F-I-L stopped in this evening and asked me how many bushels I had so far. I told him 168 buckets(5 gallon), its alot easier to carry buckets. We both laughed and I went on about my way. But this evening, this has got me thinking. I can't find a bushel basket laying around, if someone knows, I'd appreciate it. If no one knows, I guess I need to buy a bushel basket before long so I know what I've got. Thanks! Take care.

A bushel is 1 and a quarter cubic feet, in volume. (one cubic foot equals 7 1/2 gallons).


2 and a half cubic feet of ear corn settled is approx. one bushel of corn

Bushel of corn (shelled) 56 pounds
Bushel of corn (in ear) 70 pounds


According to my John Deere book titled " The operation, care and repair of farm machinery" looks like a pre 1940 book.

if I did the math right,
168 buckets x5 gallons= 840 gallons,
divide by 7.5 (gallons per one cubit foot)= 112 cubic feet,
divide by 2.5 (cubic feet that equal a bushel corn on the ear) = 44.2 bushels, and it should weigh about , 3115 pounds on the ear, shelled off about 2492 pounds of corn.

If you have 30" rows, I figure you have 1.96 acres, and if my math is correct again, if the yield holds my estimate is that you should end up with about 252 bushels, total, divide 1.96 acres approx, 128.86 bushels to the acre.

30" x 40 rows, = 1200" divide by 12 =120 feet, x 850 long = 85,000 square feet, (an acre is 43560 square feet) = 1.95 acres

44.2 bushels to 7 rows,
XX.X bushels to 40 rows

so 40 rows should = 252 bushels (cross multiply and divide) 44.2 x 40 * 7 =252.5

252.5 divide by 1.9 acres, = 128.86 bushels per acre, or some where in that area.

ANYBODY WHO HAS USED A PICKER FOR YEARS WILL TELL YOU THERES GENERALLY DOES THE SAME THING, ITS CAUSED BY AN EAR HANGING UP FOR A SHORT TIME UNTIL ENOUGH OTHER EARS PUSH AGAINST IT TO DISLODGE IT AND THEN THE WHOLE BUNCH WILL GO UP THE ELEVATOR. VERY UNRELIABLE TO JUDGE ANYTHING BY USING THAT METHOD TO DETERMINE YOUR CORN COUNT

Well Farminghandyman, you sure are handy!! I really appreciate your post and the formulas you provided. That will most certainly help me. Thank you for the lesson. Take care. Sorry about the thread drift folks-you all continue on, I enjoy reading!

I have 2 pf those JD books. Dont know if there the same year, tho I dont think so,. Havnt looked at them in years, at least since I got this thing (pc)

"The Operation, Care and Repair of Farm Machinery"

my copy is the 16 edition and according to this, http://www.greencollectors.com/dbs/l...files/oper.pdf
it was printed in 1942.

used books are available through used book Dealers

http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/Ref...E&ordering=ASC

If your into or using antique machinery there is a lot of valuable information in them, the pdf above will give you an idea of what years, the editions were printed, and you can then choose an edition that would be close to the era of the equipment of that years, (of course it is John Deere equipment), but in general good information, on many process that are not the normal of to day, (and of course there are a few pages of facts and figures in the back of the book).

Another Question. My corn fields are real green now with the corn cut, so many weeds growing plus some scattered corn seed sprouted. My question, will these green weeds worked into the soil be good for the soil, meaning will they add nitrogen etc to the soil? How soon do you disk your corn field after picking?

I disk in spring. The winds can get pretty feirce here in the cranberry marshes and all the weeds and stubble is needed to hold the soild in place. It all depends on the weeds if they will be positive on the soil structure or not.

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I'm so done here.

Well, you give your location as 'USA' so it is hard to help, PD. Depends a lot on the climate & soils you have.

Here in MN, we plow or rip the soil. Disks tend to pack the clay down & are now only specialized tools, not for regular use.

I'd plow it now, so in spring it has a hope to dry out & warm up. But that is heavy clay in Minnesota. If you are on a dry & warmer southern prairie, then you'd actually want to keep the moisture, and wouldn't do anything until you need to plant. Unless you are real far south, & the weeds will ripen & go to seed yet this fall (we had killing frost a few weeks ago already, so hard to imagine that....) then you need to do something to keep them from going to seed.

So - it depends on your goals & location.

--->Paul

Rambler, I am 20 miles from the Atlactic Ocean and I did change my location on my profile. Yes the weed are making seeds now, so I need to do something now. I could bush hog it so it will not go to seed. Every One here Disk their field's to my knowledge. I was trying to find out also if turning the Green Weeds in Adds Nitrogen to the soil like using a cover crop.

But are there weeds as tall as yoursa? If youras isa from 3 to 6ft tall, then I would brush hog them down (if u can get a brush hog), then plow them down under. The idea is to get the weed seeds as low into the ground so as to make it take much longer than the corn to sprout next year. NEXT. WEjy would you use a spreader to put fertilizer on your corn. Your putting most of it inbetween the rows where the corn cant reach it, but when the weed seeds come up they can make use of it. Weeds DO NOT add appriciable N if any to soil. Yiou ned to either get a fertilizer applicator mounted to your planter which is what I had to do, or find a planter with it already attached.

A good cover crop is a legume - they use P & K, but create Nitrogen from the air & fix it into the soil. When you plow them under, the P & K is returned to the soil.

Weeds will add a bit of N from the green of the plant, but very little. Decomposing on the soil surface, the P & K they used will be returned to the soil. So, there is only very little fertilizer from typical weeds.

Different thoughts on weed seeds - plow them in deep, they will be there 10-40 years from now, when you plow again they will reappear. Leave them on the surface & try to get them all to sprout, kill them off, and you might get rid of them.

Most weed seeds germinate in the top inch of soil; will store & remain viable burried deep in the ground for many years. Out of sight, but not out of mind.

Either way, best is to keep the seeds from forming to begin with.

--->Paul

--->Paul

FarmerBoyBill or whom ever, here is my set-up. I use a 2 row cultivator with 4 hiller blades set-up on 36". The hiller blade's almost touch each other in the center, I also use 3 12" sweeps adjusted so they move any untouched dirt from the hillers to the side of the raised bed made by the hiller's. I have 2 Cole planters attached to the back of the cultivators. I feel all the fertilizer that is spread by the spreader is moved into the raised beds, so barely any is left in the middle of the row's for the weeds. When I sling out the granuliar(?)nitrogen I go behind it with the cultivators with 24" sweeps set to pull it from the middles and push it closer to the corn. Does this sound like it will work?? Thanks!

This was just a rough year on some stuff. As to using a whirly bird to spread fertilizer...it depend on your row width. I have used mine to spread fertiliser on lots of stuff,depending on what it was,and if I had a distributer rigged up at the time. I plant in 60" and 30" rows for most stuff, and skip 2 rows if I am planting melons and pumpkins. That way I have plenty of room to cultivate with a tractor or mule. Beats a hoe any day of the week. Lots of chemicals give my sinuses a fit, so I stay away from them if I can. I like to put my fetilizer under some stuff, beside some stuff ,and some stuff I put it out by hand. It doesn't take alot of fertilizer for most stuff. Most folks around here pour it to it. That works for tobacco, but it plays havoc with your butterbeans. You really don't need to overfertilize, 350 to 500 lbs of say a 10-10-20,10-20-20 makes a pretty good corn crop. Its good to go back over your corn before it gets to tall and sidedress it with dry nitrogen. It works better than the liquid, leastways I think it does. You can put it out with your spreader, save on the cost of a spray. Some put it and the liquid out when they plant, but if you have a wet year it can be leached away before the corn needs it. I don't put my nitrogen to my sweet corn till the tassels come on, and most often I end up with nice sweet corn. That's the way I was taught to do it. I find it works for me. Disc those weeds in, they'll help build your land. It'll help get rid of some weed seed too. If you can keep from it don't ever burn of your fields, turn that trash in where it can rot like it was designed to do. Then sow some oats or rye on it to help keep what nutrients you got in your land from leaching away before you can plant again. This sorta talk goes against conventional wisdom, but its been working for several decades .