Feeding the Corn

We harvested one row of corn.  I wasn't that impressed.  The variety was Fisher's Earliest Corn and it was the first time I'd grown that variety.  While it was the earliest, it just wasn't the best.  It wasn't that sweet, it only had one ear per stalk, and only grew to maybe four feet tall.  Even though we amend our soil with lots of compost and add composted chicken manure and cow manure, I suspect we are still lacking in fertility.  Corn requires lots of nitrogen.

For the second row of a different variety called Stowell's Evergreen Sweet Corn, I want to give the corn some 'food' to help boost productivity.  Here's the thing that may amaze you.  Even with three cows and three bulls grazing all over the pasture, producing lots of poop, we don't get to use a lot of cow poop in the garden.  The reason is that the chickens quickly spread the cow manure over the grass while they search for tasty morsels in the poop.  The fertility isn't lost.  The pasture soil gets it instead of the garden soil.

This year I'm trying Gurney's Sweet Corn Food.  The ingredients are bone meal, corn gluten, kelp meal, dried molasses, poultry manure, soybean meal, and sunflower ash.

It has good reviews.  It smells kind of funky and looks a little like chicken scratch, but I'm gonna give it a try.

The package says to wait until the corn is 5 or 6 inches tall and then dig a shallow trench and apply the sweet corn food as a side dressing.

The suggested rate of application is 2 cups per 25 feet of row.  I sprinkled the prescribed amount in the trench and then will cover and gently water in.

I'll report back with results.  What I'm looking for is a 'greening' up of the leaves and a 'jump' in the growth rate which will hopefully result in higher productivity/yield.  If this doesn't work, there are many other products to try.  I'd like to stick with organic fertilizers.  Today I was reading about using earthworm castings.  I also use fish emulsion from time to time.  Next year, I may do a test plot to compare different organic fertilizers on the same row of corn to determine which one gives me the biggest bang for the buck.  For this year, I'm hopeful that the Sweet Corn Food will do the trick!