Corn?

J as to your last, I tend to agree, If it isn't closer to 5 acres, it dosent seem hardly worrh all the getting ready and having the wherewithal to do it.

Yeah we are leaning toward this too. We might do something else and just buy the corn. haha. Thanks everyone!

Plant an acre and try it seed can be had for 80 a bag up to 300 a bag . I have planted bin run corn to chop for silage before grew fine and put on good ears . I plan on planting a few acres here in Missouri this spring it is some roundup ready becks seed that they had extra this spring I plant my corn with an old john Deere fb grain drill with some holes blocked off plants at 28 inch row spacing

KY. I can do that with my drill, a 1924 IHC wood box. Ive never did OR heard of anybody else doing that. My planter is a ancient IHC tractor 2 row that cant go narrower than 32in. Id like to go 18in. That's what the renter was planting on my dads ground. Had way less weeds, course, he sprayed it, but I think with my rotary how ran through it a couple times, and I cultivated a couple times I could achieve the same effect. IF NOT, I do have a sprayer.

BUBA, IF you planted open pollinated corn, you all could set around the table, Pile it with seed corn, and everybody pick out the good center flats for next years seed. It would have to be shelled first, BUT you wouldn't have to pay for seed from then on, AND for the first 3 yrs, the yield gets better and better, and the saved seed acclimates to your area.
Look at RH Shumways catalog online and look at their varietys.

I am doing the same thing with Bakers Seeds.
I chose Wade's Giant Indian for the 12" huge ears of pretty corn.

So, You do not care what you put in your body?
There is a lot of corn I could buy out there but it is all roundup ready GMO crap that I will not feed to critters I am going to eat.
Better yet I have access to a lot of people that want healthy meat also so if I grow the good corn and cow peas I can raise the chickens and sell them on the hoof for $15 each. I will deliver them alive to the butchers after I am paid and they will pick them up and pay the butcher.

Yes I care. I disagree with your assertion that modern corn hybrids with special technology to help farmers improve the way they grow crops is harmful.

We also sell meat directly to consumers from our farm, our customers understand that the feed we provide to our animals is wholesome and nutritious. They fully understand the feed we provide to our pigs, chickens, and lambs do not contain products that are harmful to either the animal or the consumer.

Sorry for my ignorance but... what is the difference in the corn you are talking about and regular seed corn? I like the idea of saving seeds for nect year. As I have said before this is all new to us. Can someone walk me through what I need to buy and then how to tell what seeds to keep for next year? thanks!

Any hybrid seed is going to give you a mystery crop if you save seed to replant.
If you start with an open pollinated seed then they will stay true and you can count of having the same crop in following years.
I considered things like yield and time to harvest when I selected the Wade's Giant Indian corn for here.
I did the same for the cow peas, pumpkins and squash I am going to plant with the corn.

As far as just which seed to save and replant it is the full size kernels not the little ones near the point that you should save.
You best know the seasons where you are so you can decide which open pollinated seeds to buy.
R.H. Shumway's is a very old company and great to buy from.
I chose BAKER CREEK HEIRLOOM SEEDS because they are all about open pollinated and heritage seeds. They are a family farm business and I like what they are doing.
http://www.rareseeds.com/

Thanks Rust, what are you feeding your stuff to? What are cow peas good for? U grind your own?

The cow peas are to grind and mix with the corn.
I will not feed soy so the peas will provide the protein.

Yes I own many corn shellers and feed grinders.
The feed I make will supplement forage pigs and tractored chickens.

The pigs are not really going to be foraged but they will have two 32 X 32 foot pens and I will plant one while they are tearing up the other.
It took two years and five pigs to totally decimate everything in one of those pens. Two pigs the first summer then three the next.

My new farm plan is to grow the feed then get the pigs and chickens.
The idea is to measure the feed and judge how many pigs and chickens it can feed.

If it is an antique, you may need to match up some new plastic seed plates to be able to plant the seeds you buy. The size of the holes and the spacing of them will be what determines the seed count per row/acre. You will need to find a local grain dealer and do some asking. Also, the more seeds per acre or per row you plant will require more nitrogen. If you don't have enough nitrogen, your hard work and money will be wasted by poor yield. Measure the row width on the planter, then you can use these figures to get to a seed count.

ROW DISTANCE APART ROW FEET/ACRE
28" 18,668
30" 17,424
32" 16,335
36" 14,520

So, if you can squeeze your planter down to a 30" row, and plant one seed every six inches, you would need to buy at least two 80,000 count bags.....2.178 to be axact...

It would be nice if you could find a set of cultivators for your 300, five acres is a lot of hoe strokes,

And keep in mind, that's a potential of 174,240 ears of corn to snap, husk, and shell by hand...................

geo

Open pollinated corn - you can save the seed one year to the next. It maxes out at 120 bu an acre, likely only get 1/2 that. It is susceptible to insects and disease. Likes to fall over. These are 100 year old types of corn. Can plant about 20,000 or less plants per acre. Average yield might be 60-80 bu. Makes good silage tho. Don't know the cost, have to look to find it. Makes a lot of plant material, and huge ears but far less of them per acre.

Hybrid corn - comes from 2 different parents, it will not regrow true to itself so you can't save the seed. It can yield 400 bu per acre, you likely won't get near 1/2 that. They keep looking for improvements in yield, quality, disease resistance, strong stalks, etc to breed better corn. Can plant 35,000 or so seeds per acre. Might yield 100-200 bu per acre.

Gmo corn - the hybrid corn has some genes inserted to resist bugs, and resist certain sprays that make weed control better. This lets farmers use less insecticide and safer weed killers, and produces perhaps 110-250 bu per acre corn. It also gets some people all tied up in knots, to each their own.

Paul

Rusty. I get the idea that the things you speak of, with feeding and selling animals, you actually havnt done as yet. Am I right. or wong. I am going to plant Wapsee Valley next time I plant corn.

We plant both hybrid and open pollinated.... if you are looking to feed animals, go w/ the hybrid, especially if you are going to use a corn picker or something like an all crop to harvest. The open pollinated stuff goes down so easily... I have 10 acres of it and I bet only 20% is still upright, and takes FOREVER to dry down due to the big ears. We planted it to save for seed and we'll make our money back on it.. but feeding to animals, no way it'd be a total waste of time and money.

I picked the hybrid corn more than a month ago, and is currently in the bin being fed out to poultry and hogs.. they open pollinated was testing above 15% as of the end of October... so yea.

Thanks Geo and Paul!

Beets U say the OP was testing at 15% What did the hybred test at?

I want to plant OP Cause ive been told by a few sources that OP corn tests higher in the stalk AND ear than Hybred, and that cows will eat shredded OP fodder much more thourly than they will eat hybred shredded fodder.

Hybrid corn costs about $90 to 220 a bag of 80,000 seeds.

Gmo hybrid costs about $150 to 350 a bag of 80,000 seeds. (Often 2.5 acres worth or so.)

Corn is a bit of an odd grass plant.

It likes to be planted in the cold, or cool, like a grass, and likes some summer heat to really grow. Needs a lot of water as it sets and develops the ear, and nitrogen. Use about one lb of N per bu of corn you want to get. These days need to add sulphur because we don't have acid rain any more, don't get it for free. Just 10 lbs or so an acre, but its important. Phosphorous and potassium are important too, need 50-75 lbs of each per acre. All this is ballpark numbers, adjust for yields and soil types...

Corn sits in the ground and waits for the temp it wants - this is why most seed corn you buy is treated, so it doesnt rot while waiting in cold damp soil. You can just wait until its warmer out and plant; but you will lose a few bushels of yield. Especially important in a cold climate like mine, maybe not so much in the south.

Corn pops out of the ground and grows to about 4 leaves sticking out. During this time it lives off the seed kernel starch, and sends out roots. It wants to be the tallest thing around, at least right nearby, and if it gets shaded by older corn or weeds, it will stop growing roots and try to grow taller. This messes it up for the rest of the year, and it will never reach its full yielding potential.

At this point the corn stops visibly growing for a while, but it is very busy taking in sunlight and developing its roots and developing its growing point - still below the surface. You won't see much growth for a couple of weeks, but this might be the most important time for the corn.

It is very easy for weeds to grow up around the corn at this time, and overshadow it. This bothers the corn, worries it, and makes it abandon the roots and growing point, and tries to grow taller stalk instead to get above the weeds - it will fail at this because it isn't meant to grow tall at this point. Now it is all messed up, and has weak roots, spindly stalk, and the growing point didnt develop right.

Even of you kill the weeds now, that corn is damaged, and will yield 25 - 75% less than it could have.

That early time of corn is critical, it needs to sit still and develop during that 2 week period.

This is where most beginning corn farmers fail. Well, those weeds don't look that bad, I can get to them next weekend, what do they hurt now......

And boom, you lost 1/3 of your crop without even knowing it.

If you raise organically, this is where you need to harrow when the corn is just breaking through the surface; you need to rotary hoe or cultivate every 7 days whether you see weeds or not - if you see weeds, you lost out, you can't get them without harming the corn or letting the weed get too big. You need to be killing weeds when they are little wispy white root looking things just poking out of the ground. Relentlessly. And yes you can use a hoe on small parcels. Same rules apply tho.

Regular corn gets sprayed with a grass weed killer before or just after planting, and a mixture of several broadleaf sprays when it is in that 3-4 leaf stage. We use these chemicals because weed control is so very critical to corn growth and yield.

Gmo corn can use a less toxic weed spray after it is out of the ground to kill most types of weeds. Again, it is to let that corn sit totally undisturbed in that critical root and growing point time frame.

Once the corn puts on a 6th leaf you can see, that is when the growing point is coming out of the ground. Leaves continue to come out from the growing point which is now rising with the stalk, and the corn grows rapidly because it has a big well developed root system. The ear comes out of a leaf collar, and the tassel forms on top of the growing point, and you have corn! The pollination period is the second most critical time, the corn doesn't like too much heat (over 100) at this time, nor too much stress from wind or rain or dry. Just a nice quiet good weather period to let the pollen from the tassels fall on the silks on the ears, gentle breezes.

Insects like to bother corn. Some are after the early seedling, some are in the roots later on and prune off the roots. Some are in the stalk and make the stalk weak and fall over. Some are in the ear, tho those are the least bothersome to field corn.

The seed treatment has insecticides in it to help a bit with the early insects. Sometimes that treatment is stronger and helps with the root pruning insects a bit. Some folks add insecticide in the row to keep all of the insects away mostly. These are pretty rugged, harsh insecticides, long lasting and harmful to the people handling them of not careful. It is real nice to not need to use them. The gmo corn seed might have bT insecticide engineered into the stalk and leaves, so no or very little of the liquid insecticides need to be used. This is nicer for the farm environment and the farmer, far less dangerous to him.

Rotating crops helps reduce insects; but a few have adapted to that, and will now wait an extra year and infest the corn crop every other year. Also plowing under all the corn stalks and leaves so they rot underground helps get rid of the corn insects; but most people are opposed to so much tillage and want us to farm with reduced tillage, to reduce erosion and the sediment that comes out by Louisiana. It depends where in the country you are, which type of big is the worst enemy. But it is difficult to get away from any insect bug control at all - seed coating, dribbled in the seed trench, or gmo bT.

This is how field corn is grown. Proper fertilizer rates, very even seeding, critical weed control, and insect management are the keys.

You can do this with open pollinated, with regular hybrid, with gmo, organically, whatever, but the steps and the important bits will be the same whatever system you choose to use. Most farmers do an assortment of the different systems - cover crops, rotation, so,e tillage, herbicides, insecticides - not just one thing over and over and over.

Obviously as a hobby getting everything perfect doesnt have to happen, but the better you do, the more efficient, the more sustainable, the better yields per acre and plant you will get.

Paul

I understand op corn can make good silage. It has a lot more leaves, and the stems are weaker, which makes them more easy to eat I would assume. You will not get as much corn - the starch energy - as with a good hybrid, but that can be adjusted with your total feed mix. Silage is harvest when still green, so the op corn is less likely to have fallen over by the time you harvest it. I'm not sure if you can plant it a tad heavier that way, for silage?

Paul