corn – Peacock Orchard

Corn Problems

What is up with corn around here? Could it drive me any more crazy. I’m not even sure why I would even want to plant it after this failure. Last year the corn suffered from pollination problems. This year I planted it close, and I do mean really close.

I can’t even see the ground through it so how on earth did it suffer from poor pollination this time?

It is gloriously tall and each stalk has two ears of corn on it. Some of it looks quite nice, others are awful.

I just don’t even….

2015 Sunken Corn Hugel results

The majority of the corn has been harvested and it is……interesting, to say the least. I planted painted mountain corn and yellow sweet corn in mounds in the sunken hugel. The mounds were surrounded by green beans which grew like crazy. They’ve all been harvested already. The corn is different. The color variety in the painted mountain corn is pretty extreme as you can tell in the above picture. More interesting is the intermixing between the two corn varieties I planted.

These SHOULD have been yellow sweet corn. The yellow sweet corn is odd in oh so many ways. For one, the kerneling is crazy bad.

And secondly because some of it was colored. Just weird.

The painted mountain corn didn’t avoid the weird kerneling but it is a lot more uniform.

I’ve decided to dry all of the corn for seed next year. I’m impressed with it’s hardiness as corn is notoriously hard to grow here (thanks wind). It will make a beautiful display hanging from the pot rack!

Experimentation on the farm

We are always experimenting to see what works best for our area. Last year it was swales and berms, which have been fairly successful. This year it will be different earth works and a deeper look into our personal food systems. Below is a list of our current experiments:

Corn- The best way to grow it. Sunken hugel bed and corn planted in the bottom of crater gardens for wind protection. Which will do best? I suspect the wind protection will be a big boon to growing corn here, though the soil at the bottom of the craters is quite hard, so may not allow the corn to grow sufficient roots. We shall see.
Potatoes- I bought 4 different varieties of potatoes and I am going to plant them in 3 different ways to see what does the best. Some will be planted in our raised bed, some in the berms and some in a tire tower.
Bio char is going to be added to a wide variety of plantings to see if it helps.
We are going to be testing the viability of Sainfoin as a dry land forage/hay.
I am going to be setting up the silvapasture but have not decided what the best planting method will be yet. Do I plant in holes for water and wind protection, but risking animal legs, or do I do swales? I don’t know. See what we come up with and how it goes.
Ginseng experimentation. Can it grow here? What is the proper soil/sun conditions in our area. We will be spreading 250 ginseng seeds through various rows of trees in our tree line and seeing what does best.
Best earth work for our environment. Now, I enjoy our swales and berms and still believe in them. However, the bush experiment from last year has me thinking basins and mini craters are going to be the absolute best way to grow things here. This years earth works will be building basins and mini craters and testing them against last years systems.

It is an exciting time for us here on the farm. Establishment has been stressful, expensive and exciting. I can’t wait to see how our plants succeed here.