Corn is among the most difficult crops to grow on a small scale in the home garden. Put twenty seeds in the ground, five of them fail to sprout, and there is a good week’s difference in germination time between the first and last to emerge. Thus, the early sprouters can sometimes shade out those that sprouted later, creating uneven maturity. On top of this, it is often a long-season crop; which can be a rather iffy proposition here in NH.
I solve this problem by planting out corn as seedlings. That is, I plant the corn indoors in soil blocks a couple of weeks before I would ordinarily plant it outside. This way, the non-germinating seeds aren’t leaving a bare patch in the garden and I can match those seedlings I plant outside by height so that nothing will be inordinately shaded.
By doing this I end up with far superior results on a small scale than could be had by trying to scale-down the methods of industrial agriculture.
Filed under: Corn, Planting, Self-Sufficiency, Vegetables
