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Post by RpR on Dec 2, 2014 14:44:18 GMT -5
This fall I finally made time to put Sheep manure on my garden South of here, the old home place.
Now weeds will obviously be healthy next year but as the garden went from exceptionally good corn to pathetic in one year what should I expect with the manure boost next year for corn.
Potatoes still do well there, and the natural state of soil there is acidic.
My dad and I did this this before with no set time frame and it worked well but I have never had such a drop in production like I had the past several years, although new seed failure was part of the problem.
If, and a big IF, it is lousy next year, what could be wrong? One last item, the year I had incredible results, I heavily mulched with leaves and hay, did that make that much difference?
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Post by RpR on Jun 10, 2015 10:46:02 GMT -5
Well this year so far is looking real good.
Only failure so far was a packet of corn from Native Seeds, with an eighty percent failure.
Of the seven patches of corn put in, six are ninety percent, minimum, popping out of the ground. Four sweet corn and two field corn are looking real good with weeds so far not a major concern other than some thistle I should have dealt with last year.
Even two very small after thought patches I put up north are looking real good.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Jun 10, 2015 14:03:49 GMT -5
I can only comment on the leaves. Here i have found mowed leaves provide one of the best fertilizers i can find. They break down feeding the microbiome and in turn the microbiome fix the nutrients needed by plants. Especially when a piece of ground is hard, dry, cracked and/or nutrient deficient a good mulching of decomposing leaves does wonders after a few rains.
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Post by flowerweaver on Jun 10, 2015 21:11:47 GMT -5
Which corn was it? I had bad germination this year with their Tarahumara Rosari.
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Post by RpR on Jun 10, 2015 23:53:47 GMT -5
Which corn was it? I had bad germination this year with their Tarahumara Rosari. Mayo Tuxpeno Unless some showed up in the pat five days, only four plants out the entire pack came up. I am going down to that garden tomorrow so I will see if more came up.
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Post by 12540dumont on Jun 11, 2015 14:43:17 GMT -5
I have had some very sad germination with commercial corn. Do not forget to email them and tell them of the failure!
From the USDA I had 90% germination with corn that was 5 years old! My old sheep pen, which had alfalfa and hay thrown in it every day is some of the most productive land on the farm. Leaves are the best thing since sliced bread. In Willow Glen, a town about 30 miles from me in the fall, people put their leaves out at the curb on the street to be scooped up. I often take the truck and fetch them home. They are as good as bunny bedding! At home I'm trying to get more leaves by planting deciduous trees on the side that doesn't shade the garden. Luckily that's also the side the wind comes from here (the North) So, I'm getting more leaves for the farm, and less dessication.
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Post by RpR on Jul 8, 2015 0:02:28 GMT -5
The corn is doing very, very well. Some stalks that came from me probably dropping seeds are doing very well also.
One, a few weeks back, had been knocked over when it was about five inches tall and looked dead. Last week when I was checking on that garden, it had righted itself, look a bit beat up but was very much alive.
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Post by RpR on Jul 18, 2015 1:05:22 GMT -5
Radar shows heavy rain moving over my South garden from 11:00 to 1:00 AM.
I am just hoping it is only rain and no wind as I do not want to have to go down there and try to stand up a garden of lodged corn.
I propped up the corn up North and it seems to be doing well. It has very good color so the side-dressing seems to have worked quite well and did not wash out with the frequent rains.
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Post by RpR on Jul 19, 2015 23:06:10 GMT -5
Well the South garden was not as bad as could have been but twelve stalks are being turned into compost and I am not sure just how great the yield of the surviving sweet corn stalks will be. The lodged stalks and rows are held up with posts and twines but time will tell/
If they fall over sideways it is a fairly easy fix but if they fall like dominoes it is a bit of a hemorrhoid.
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Post by RpR on Aug 13, 2015 11:09:29 GMT -5
Corn has done very well, first sweet corn will be ready for the pot in a few days. Country Gentleman was not big enough for the pot yesterday but still made a good raw snack.
The squirrels should eat well this winter.
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Post by RpR on Aug 18, 2015 0:01:54 GMT -5
Sweet corn in the south garden is pretty much a seventy five percent total loss. The hybrid Country Gentleman is not ready yet and may be OK but two of the other three varieties, staking up the corn and having to tie them up along with being battered seems to have caused the corn to yield very few cobs of corn that are not just little two to three inch stub cobs at best.
One packet of sweet Corn from Native Seeds still has mostly healthy stalks but only time will tell how it yield as it is now just starting to tassle. Field corn seems to be very healthy, I picked on unripe cob that was large and and filling out. Even the few field corn stalks from the Native Seeds packet that did not produce many stalks look real good.
The north garden should be ready to be picked this week and from what I have seen there it should be good but the miserable results I have had with sweet corn for a fair number of years now, I will not hold my breath. Sad thing is for decades I had absolutely zero problems ever growing sweet corn, even when some lodged.
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Post by RpR on Sept 6, 2015 18:02:05 GMT -5
The sweet corn up north did very well. I do not really like frozen corn even though Sharon seems to like to freeze it, and then not eat it so there is more sweet corn left for the squirrels than in an average year as it is all sweet corn up north.
Down south the South American sweet corn should be ready soon so then I will know how that turned ut but the field corn and the South American field corn did very, very well. The packet with few emerging plants must have shot up a few more than when I wrote four as there is a nice stand and looks real nice if there is enough warm weather for cobs. The corns stalks color down there looks real nice without any side dressing while the Oxalis and Purselane were absolutely amazingly healthy even for weeds.
As a side note: The weather must have been near perfect for a lot of plants as my roses did super well even without the normal care I give them. Without the fertilizing regiment I would normally do, one rose is over six feet tall. I have never had a rose within a foot and a half of that before while at the same time Black-spot has NOT been a problem even though I ran out of Serenade back in the early summer.
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Post by RpR on Sept 21, 2015 22:11:45 GMT -5
Well my corn from the Southwest gave me healthy stalks and a healthy crop of smut but not much else.
I wish I had checked it sooner as I would like to eat some of the corn smut, they say it is pretty good but it was more black than grey when I got there.
My hybrid Country Gentleman seed was a year old and oddly, it did far better up north with side dressing and no sheep poop than that down south which had a healthy dose of sheep poop. The cobs up north filled out better and there were more of them, while at the same time the CG stalks were really not affected by the wind storm that screwed up the other sweet corn varieties. As I can only eat so much and really have little love for frozen corn, the squirrels will eat well this winter.
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Post by steev on Sept 22, 2015 2:19:04 GMT -5
Well, sometimes our cousins profit from our efforts more than we do; too bad about the smut, it's really a treat, IMHO.
Fat squirrels in the Spring, perhaps.
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Post by RpR on Sept 30, 2015 14:27:18 GMT -5
I am a week or two away from stripping the stalks of ears and digging out or cutting off the stalks for a decorative corn shoack/s.
I am a bit amazed that the Southwestern corn did not suffer from the wind storm weeks ago as in the past my SW corn often was often as brittle as an English Oak and I would find one half of a stalk standing with the other half laying on the ground but besides being a nice dark green the ones that did come up are all still standing, not even bent over.
Now that Baker's Creek is offering SW varieties again I may try a few of those next year. This year one could get away with at least 150 day corn so while it is a crap-shoot nothing lost to give it a shot next year.
As their is the original OP Country Gentleman and a hybrid CG, what might one get it one planted, every other plant a OP and Hybrid patch? No real difference or if one saved some seed for the the next year, a Frankenstein monster?
Thinking about it, down South if I plant corn, potato, corn, potato in a checker board pattern, I should be able to get without any crowding five different corn patches without concern for cross breeding and if lodging happens there will be enough room to prop up lodged stalks easily.
I will have all winter to think about it, which I will.
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