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Registered: ‎03-03-2011

My all time favorite seed co. I treasure their catalogs.

Early Spring In Dragonfly Cottage Garden ~ Lots Of Pictures ...

 

 

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Posts: 24,105
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

A quick corn update. The first twelve plants are now about 20"-24" tall and growing well. The second crop (13 plants) is about twelve inches tall and I started the seeds for the third crop yesterday. The corn gets a daily watering and today they got a good drink of fertilizer also. So far, so good. The corn matures in 79 days (give or take a bit) and my first frost date is typically around mid-October. So, working backward from then I should start my last rotation of corn around mid-July. That should have that crop maturing right around the end of the first week of October. (I may use the corn stalks to decorate my front porch for Halloween and Thanksgiving.)

 

Everything's going well so far. I kind of expect the first harvest in mid-July, maybe a tick earlier or later. In another two weeks or so I'll start another batch of the seeds up and then another in late June/earlyJuly and then one final sowing in mid-July. Whatever seeds I have left will then get set aside in the fridge for next year.

 

With my annuals now all out from under the lights (with a few later started exceptions) I'll be moving on to starting some perennials from seed for planting out later in the summer. I already started the Rudbeckia Goldsturm due to accidentally getting the seed packet wet earlier in the year and they're about two to three inches tall already and will be getting repotted soon. Echinacea, hollyhocks, and some other perennials will be getting started this week. Last year's hollyhocks are just now coming into bloom. The lupines I started last year have pretty much finished flowering. The echinacea I started last year are budding up and will soon be in flower. As is sadly traditional with me and my garden the asclepias started last year didn't survive the winter. They just don't like it here. They flowered well last year, but they haven't reappeared this year. Oh well, that opens up space for other plants.

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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A quick update! The corn is starting to form tassels! As you experienced corn growers know, that can only mean one of two things. Either the corn has decided to become an exotic dancer (Where did I go wrong? You try to raise it right with good moral backing and then it goes off and does something like that?) Or, it's vaguely possible the corn is getting ready to bear fruit. Hopefully, it's the latter of the two, but with my luck, well, we'll have to see what happens.

 

I wasn't going to mention anything as I didn't want to tassel tale, but I figured someone might get curious what was going on, and maybe one of the rogue corn plants would end up in a local strip club, huskless and shaking its tassels for cash, so I figured I'd best get it out in the open now rather than try to explain later.

 

This post might have taken a corny turn, but hey, what do you expect? It's about corn. 

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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@gardenman Smiley LOL Sounds like your first planting has turned the corner and getting ready to lend an ear to your careful husbandry. You alll will soon be clothed in silk! (Oh, well. I tried.)

Respected Contributor
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Registered: ‎09-04-2010

It's been so long since I planted corn 20 years and the rabbits got every single one during the night. I am trying again with a fenced garden and I have little husks inside the stalk. Hope that's a good sign.

The tomatoes plants are over three feet tall and I have 9 green ones so far.  These were plants I bought. I also planted seeds and those tomato plants are maybe a foot tall, surprised they aren't bigger.

The corn is 3 ft high.

I see cucumber plants coming up as well as all the flower seeds I planted around the fence line to ward off critters. 

I am going to do what you did and plant more corn seeds now if I can find room.

I will take a pic of my garden if anyone wants to see it! The only thing I worry about is squirrels jumping over and eating the tomatoes. I saw a squirrel this morning climbing my yucca plants to get to the flowers. I staked the chicken wire down pretty good so the chipmunks and rabbits won't get in. Hopefully the raccoons won't crash my fence.  

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The first corn crop is now four feet tall (some more, some less) and all are showing tassel formation. Crop two is about two feet tall and crop three is about six inches to a foot tall, while crop four is just now germinating and maybe an inch or two tall. I'll be starting two more crops of corn, one in late June and one just before mid-July. That will give me a total of six crops of corn this year from one packet of seeds.

 

The last couple of crops have more plants than the early ones. I was starting two seeds in each six-pack but the germination rate was good and I was cutting off a perfectly good plant in most of the packs, so I've now opted to simply start one seed in each of four four-packs for a possible total of 16 plants for each crop. If some fail to germinate (as they did in crop three where I ended up with thirteen plants) I still end up with at least twelve plants. Crop four has had all sixteen germinate so there will be sixteen plants in crop four. I'm using fewer seeds (16 versus 24) and getting more plants this way.

 

Late this coming week crop four will get planted out and then crop five will get started at the end of June. Crop six will get started around July tenth (give or take a bit and that's the last crop I can reasonably expect to reach harvest before frost. Hard to believe I'm already planning for the first frost but with a crop that takes 79 days to mature, you've got to look that far ahead.

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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garden 6-20-2020 001.JPGgarden 6-20-2020 007.JPG

garden 6-20-2020 005.JPG

I went out and took some pics, I'm pretty excited!

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@luvmyteddy4 

 

Looks good! Yeah, corn is one of the plants you want to do succession planting with as the plants only yield for a week or two. A couple I watch on YouTube planted something like 300 corn plants at the same time and will have a whole lot of corn to deal with at one time.

 

I've been planting twelve or so plants every couple of weeks and each plant should give me one to two ears of corn so that's about twelve to 24 ears of corn every two weeks. I can manage that with little to no trouble. Three hundred to six hundred ears of corn in two weeks? That's not so easy to manage. Plant what you anticipate needing when it's ripe and ready every few weeks or so and you won't get overwhelmed, but still have all the corn you want.

 

Plants that bear fruit over the whole season can all be planted at once, but plants that only produce in a short window should be started in succession so there's always a new harvest coming along.

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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By the way, old-school gardeners planted what they called the trinity. In the same area, they'd plant corn, climbing beans, and squash. The climbing beans would climb up the corn stalks and deposit nitrogen into the soil for the corn. (Beans are legumes and one of their unique properties is absorbing nitrogen from the air and depositing it at their roots for future use using nitrogen-fixing bacteria.) The squash plants quickly crowd out weeds and get enough light through the corn to thrive. In one smallish plot, you could get beans, corn, and squash with minimal maintenance. Just be sure you have a lot of water handy as all three get pretty thirsty. 

 

For optimal growth, the experts say each corn plant needs as much as five gallons of water a week. Squash and beans aren't much behind them in terms of water usage, so a large water supply is helpful.

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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Registered: ‎09-04-2010

Re: Ordered some corn seed

[ Edited ]

@gardenman wrote:

@luvmyteddy4 

 

Looks good! Yeah, corn is one of the plants you want to do succession planting with as the plants only yield for a week or two. A couple I watch on YouTube planted something like 300 corn plants at the same time and will have a whole lot of corn to deal with at one time.

 

I've been planting twelve or so plants every couple of weeks and each plant should give me one to two ears of corn so that's about twelve to 24 ears of corn every two weeks. I can manage that with little to no trouble. Three hundred to six hundred ears of corn in two weeks? That's not so easy to manage. Plant what you anticipate needing when it's ripe and ready every few weeks or so and you won't get overwhelmed, but still have all the corn you want.

 

Plants that bear fruit over the whole season can all be planted at once, but plants that only produce in a short window should be started in succession so there's always a new harvest coming along.


I don't remember getting 2 corn on one plant but great! I'm not sure where I'm going to add more corn my gardens pretty crowded now but I have plenty of seeds left.

I plan on selling the tomatoes and corn at my house if I get a good crop. I've spent so much money on the garden with fencing, stakes, etc plus having the garden tilled I would like to recoup some costs. I will have a better idea next year on how I want it done. I am so glad I fenced it in though!

I had a huge garden in the 80s where I planted everything under the sun literally and it was awesome!

I have full sun all day and it rained yesterday all day!

Thanks, love the thread.