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Post by littleminnie on Feb 27, 2012 20:47:01 GMT -5
Now before you scoff I want you to know I would usually cut this idea down instantly too but a lady on another forum does it every year with great results- no lost plants and 3-4 weeks head start. She does it in normal celled trays not peat pots and starts them inside and immediately puts them out to harden off after they sprout. She says it is important to go for only 3 weeks in trays. I know when I have seeded corn and had two come up and then try to transplant one it always fails, but she has good results with transplanting babies. I am sure you need to water well and plant out maybe on a cloudy day or evening or misty weather. I am using black plastic this year for my corn due to weeds and was going to use a jab seeder for all. Now some will be jabbed seeds and some will be little seedlings.
Here is my math. My beds are 48 feet by 3.5+ feet wide. I am going to do 3 rows more than one foot apart and then do each plant 6 inches apart. So it is 96 plants per row and 3 rows equals 288 plants. 72 seedlings per tray equals 4 trays exactly for one bed. That isn't bad at all. I will probably just do one bed as transplants to get me some early corn.
I'll report how it goes. Last year I experimented with starting some peas inside. It was ok but not too successful. I always start sweet peas inside.
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Post by blueadzuki on Feb 27, 2012 22:22:45 GMT -5
I just did it with some of my Andean corn, on the grounds that the best way to give it the maximum time in the weather it likes (the cool of the spring before the summer comes and stops it's growth cold) is to be able to place decent sized plants in the ground at a time of year when they would have barely sprouted if I driect seeded them. making them plants also means I don't have to plant 40-50x the corn I can actually grow just to keep up with the rampaging squirrels and chipmunks (who last year managed to eat literally 4,000 planted seeds literally overnight). As for trasplanting tiny corn seedlings, I do it all the time. I have to; it's the only way I know to get the plants in a grid so that, come pollination, 90% of the pollen isn't being simply blown onto the ground or over the cliff. Germination is irregular (especially when you have rodents); let on their own and I'd have almost all my corn plants in basically a row and column of 1 plant (or at least with a ten foot gap between two plants and bear in mind that 10 feet one inch is over the edge of the field and down the cliff.)
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 28, 2012 6:39:10 GMT -5
I've done it with field corn when I wanted to get some crossing from two different timed varieties. It worked perfectly, something like 100%. I have read that corn doesn't like to be transplanted, maybe they just mean sweet corn? Sweet corn is so delicate in other ways,maybe the root system is less robust as well. I never grow sweet corn. I can't make any money on it and I have my other corns I love to play with and don't want to worry about sweet corn pollen in the mix.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 28, 2012 10:10:32 GMT -5
I have read that corn doesn't like to be transplanted, maybe they just mean sweet corn? Sweet corn is so delicate in other ways,maybe the root system is less robust as well. I never grow sweet corn. I can't make any money on it and I have my other corns I love to play with and don't want to worry about sweet corn pollen in the mix. I transplant sweet corn regularly: from one place in the field to another. Even if I shake all the dirt off the roots, it grows like nothing at all happened to it. Normally though, I pick up a whole shovel full of dirt with the plant and plop it into a pre-dug hole where I want it to be. I transplant when rain is expected. For me, any day is a great day to have a truckload of sweet corn!! It's the best selling thing that I grow; and the easiest. Every stage of growth can be managed while standing up: From seeding, to weeding, to harvest.
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Post by Walk on Feb 28, 2012 10:13:12 GMT -5
I usually presprout corn and carefully plant the sprouts. Our beds are 4' wide with 3 rows running down the length of them but we give 12" of space between plants in the rows. It would depend on the variety but some of the OP corns need more room to spread. I have tried to do corn in plug trays but the OP variety we had was too vigorous and the root grew to the bottom of the cell, turned and came back up to the top, and turned again and grew out the bottom which made it difficult to get out intact. The top only had 2 small leaves at this point. I do know that a big organic farm near here starts corn in large cell trays, but they are doing hybrids which don't appear to have the same rambunctious growth habit. They do all their transplants with 2 guys on a tractor-drawn transplanter, so they aren't having any difficulty with the roots.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 28, 2012 11:08:51 GMT -5
I find that there is no system of transplanting that doesn't damage roots more or less. The question is whether the species in question minds having it's roots damaged. In my experience corn doesn't give a rip, but the garden guides tell you not to transplant it? Go figure.
Joseph, what do you charge a dozen? Folks at markets around here basically give it away. We buy it from other farmers and it always feels like stealing.
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Post by mountaintopgarden on Feb 28, 2012 11:55:35 GMT -5
There is a great gardener near me in Vermont who sells some produce from his garden.
Now I didn't talk to him about this directly, my husband the non-gardener talked to him. This gardener told my husband, and my husband told me, that he starts his sweet corn in doors and he's eating corn by July 4th. In Vermont!
I'm going to try some started indoors this year.
I do move corn seedling around in my garden if one area in the bed didn't germinate well, and the moved corn seems to do fine.
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Post by littleminnie on Feb 28, 2012 12:24:08 GMT -5
Wow I never got it to live when moving one growing in the wrong spot. In 2010 I had one corn plant volunteer in my tomato row. ;D
I am in the middle on the usefulness of growing sweet corn. It is tough for me to grow and takes a lot of room for the meager production. It is also everywhere cheap at that time of year and I cannot get people to buy it at market for organic prices. However I really like having it for the CSAs and I cannot find someone else to grow it for me.
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Post by ottawagardener on Feb 28, 2012 12:24:54 GMT -5
I"ve heard of this technique many a time especially in relation to giving corn a head start when planting them as support for beans or in areas where there is heavy predation on corn seed/sprouts (Not sure how it helps but there you go). Anyhow, doesn't sound ludicrous to me.
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Post by johno on Feb 28, 2012 12:41:45 GMT -5
I grow it (and corn in general) for use here, but could not compete with the market prices.
I knew a man who was starting his corn in Dixie cups several years ago. It worked. I think he transplanted them at a month or younger, too.
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Post by DarJones on Feb 28, 2012 17:50:07 GMT -5
I regularly grow some corn in cell trays and transplant into the garden when it is 1 to 2 inches tall.
A corn seed sends out a primary root as the seed germinates. This primary root is critical to future production of the plant. If that primary root is damaged, you can seriously reduce the size of the ear of corn the plant will produce. The way to get around this is to use a very loose seed start mix that allows the root to move as you transplant.
A huge advantage for starting in trays in my soil type is that corn that is pre-started will give 100% viable seedlings so that the row is completely full with no skips. Another way to use this is to pre-start very long season varieties so that they can mature in marginal climates. I do this with tropical corns because they need the extra time to produce a crop.
DarJones
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Post by steev on Feb 28, 2012 21:28:07 GMT -5
Due to the taproot issue, any time I've transplanted corn, I've grown it in TP tubes or newsprint tube-pots, so as to have room for that root to grow unhindered, then planted the pot and all into very loose soil.
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Post by flowerpower on Feb 29, 2012 8:02:29 GMT -5
I start corn in 6 in pots about a week or two before I can plant. They are 2-3 in tall & I've lost very few. Just be careful with the roots.
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Post by traab on Feb 29, 2012 13:34:31 GMT -5
To isolate rare corns from any pollen I start seeds on a perlite surface with the old bean rescue techniques you folks shared a few years ago when I grew out old seed collections for others. Over heat and under lights a quick germination and tops about 2-4 inches were produced quickly from seeds almost touching eat other. I plant in the bottom of trenches and cover with plastic after watering with weak warm nutrient-vitamin solution. The first year I planted April 1 last year April 15. Early May would be the time for seeding. This is a small planting and each sprout is carefully placed. The crops have shed pollen before any other corn is a foot high but the weather is stable. Along with cages over short early corns during pollen shed/ silking period, there is little likelihood of external pollen reaching silk. Useful for pollination and preserving varieties. Commercial sweet corn producers seed drill in the bottom of trenches covered with plastic using commercial fert/mineral/vitamin for early sweet corn. Thanks to this blog I was able to grow old collections of rare seeds for others using an adaptation of the old sweet corn planting technique. If early swet corn brings enough premium it might be worth a gamble. I ran across an early hybrid that really grew at double the rate of the other early sweet corns-visual observation- but the conventional sweet corn came in a short time later so the early sweet corn was not worth my small garden space.
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Post by bunkie on Feb 29, 2012 14:35:22 GMT -5
we start some of our corn in flats filled with potting soil. they separate pretty easily and grow just fine. have also started them in root trainers, and had great success with val's/grungy's idea here on the winter sowing thread... " Again ceara, think paper pots 1 1/4" - 1 1/2" = 12 to a milk jug bottom. I use an cardboard tube from paper towels for the form to roll the newspaper around. Tear the news paper in 7 1/4" inch strips that will go at least twice around the form (2 and 1/2 times is actually better). Measure up 6" from the end of the tube and draw a line around it at this point. Wrap your newsprint around the tube, Fold the excess under to form the bottom of the pot. Slip off the pot, fill with dirt and you have a nice deep pot 6" deep that will stay good for at least 3 weeks. Then when you are ready to plant out, you plant the corn, pot and all. Tear off the top inch or so and bury the paper pot completely." alanbishop.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=alt&action=display&thread=3386&page=3#
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