How to Grow Corn?

If you've seen Field of Dreams you are familiar with the idea of corn. Most people are intrigued by the idea of learning how to grow corn, but not everybody is cut out for corn growing. Knowing how to grow corn that grows to be healthy and hardy year after year, takes time and practice. It isn't something that you can learn entirely from books. Here are a few hints to help you in your quest to know more about growing corn:

Once you have decided that you want to learn how to grow corn, you will need to do a survey of your property to find the best soil for the corn seeds. Corn needs to be grown in soil that gets full sunlight and has a pH balance of at least 6.0 but not more than 6.8. The soil also needs to be able to retain moisture and it needs to drain well. The best way to keep the soil "corn friendly" is to add some compost or some manure that has been well cured.

The next step to learning how to grow corn is to buy corn plants at your local nursery, especially if your local growing season tends to be shorter than is needed to grow corn from seeds. When you have your seeds or small plants, you will want to plant them between four and six inches apart and around an inch and a half deep. The easiest way to plant corn is to plant them in "hills" or mounds that have been made of soil, compost and fertilizer or manure. You can grow a few corn plants in the same hill and you can cluster the hills together. There is no rule that says corn must be planted in long rows.

When you learn how to grow corn, you will learn that you need to start spreading the corn plants out when they get to be more than a few inches tall and when the ground has warmed up. As the plants grow, they will need to get, at a minimum, an inch of water every week. Always make sure that you water from the bottom, never from above. When you water from above you can wash the pollen away.

Another step to learning how to grow corn is learning that corn plants should be given liquid organic fertilizer at least three times over the course of the growing season: at ten inches, at eighteen inches and then when the tassels show up.

Your final step in learning to grow corn is the harvest: Corn can be harvested when the husks are a dark green in color and the corn silks are brown and dry but are still supple. The mature corn plant will have full size kernels that reach to the top of each ear. The kernels appear about twenty days after the silks grow in. Now that you have learned how to grow corn, you will have plenty of fresh corn on hand for those summer barbecues!

Tracy Ballisager is a stay at home mum. To read more on gardening tips go to http://www.gardening-tips-idea.com