Gardening Methods

Growing corn in Mississippi?

I love, to garden, but have never grown corn, whats the best kind, any type of soil preparation? I’ve often wondered about sweetening the soil, like you do in terrarriums, would that be a good idea for corn or other vegetables?

I do not know anything about terrariums and I have no idea why you can put in a whole layer of charcoal and still have plants grow in there<<

Perhaps the answer is layers. and thickness of the layers..like when acid loving plants are able to grow back after a forest fire.

idk

I think your thought is quite interesting and worthy of experimentation. I will trial it some day. and if you try it then it would be cool to hear how it turns out.

Sweetening (or raising the pH) in modern farming is done with lime. And some Mississippi soil's pH readings will allow for liming and some will not. You can tell by testing the soil.

You can find testing paper (sometimes called litmus paper) or liquid test kits at places that sell plants/plant supplies (about $10 USD) or at health supply since people use them to measure the pH of the body (our blood is pretty sweet, it measures 7.353). And you can make your own pH paper from red cabbages and other similarly colored plant matter.

I do not recommend adjusting your regular garden soil so much that it would take it into the alkaline range however; alkalinity can lock up nutrients pretty quickly. I had a plant almost die overnight when it's maganese got locked up. I had added a few tablespoons of ash to it's five gallon pot in an effort to feed phosphorus but the ash changed the pH to 7.2 and it wasn't good. It was easily corrected by flushing /rinsing out the soil with repeated floodings of water <<

here is a chart showing what nutrients are available at what pH readings:
http://extension.caes.uga.edu/mastergardener/Training/SAPMfiles/Segment%201_files/images/image7.png

Most veggies like slightly acidic soil although most can grow in neutral soils.

6.2 - 6.7 is good.

Sweetening is rarely "needed" if you are using plenty of compost or manure or cover cropping amendments. Adding stuff like compost contributes to soil neutrality.

Corn will appreciate plenty of feeding as you can probably guess.. it has to get big in a short amount of time.. plus it is very green<

Corn pollen needs to fall from those stalks onto a neighboring plant's silks. So it is good to plant your corn in blocks rather than a long single row. And if have different kinds of corn maturing at the same time, then they can cross pollinate. I have a variety of corn which has rainbow colored kernals and yet tastes pretty sweet. So mutants aren't all bad but you may want pure strains. I hope you are not across the street from a field of dent corn because then they will cross pollinate...

You can plant an early strain and a mid-season strain and a late strain and that way you can have staggered corn harvests. or you can stagger the timing of plantings for just one strain; like plant one block this week and one block next week and so on.

The new bi-color strains look interesting but I have not tried them. Some white varieties have been good for me in taste but if I had to choose, I would go with a good yellow sweet instead. And then you have various rainbow breeds and those cute little ones that are all red and pOp corn. Depends what you like.

The time to harvest sweet corn is when the juice inside the kernals turns milky white. You can check it by peeling back the husk a bit and puncturing a kernal to see the fluid.

Mississippi State University has some good links and their search engine turns up some good stuff too:
http://msucares.com/crops/corn/index.html

I like this page of theirs; it has vegetable gardening links and talks about extension offices doing soil tests:
http://msucares.com/lawn/garden/vegetables/soil/ph.html

Mississippi extension offices where you might get a good soil test done for cheap:
http://msucares.com/counties/

Garden Web has forums where you can talk about gardening stuff:
http://www.gardenweb.com/

and so does this place although they are not very active:
http://www.farm-garden.com/vegetables/sweetcorn

Descriptions of nutrient deficencies in corn:
http://www.cropsoil.uga.edu/~oplank/diagnostics70/Symptoms_/Corn/corn.html

pictures of deficencies in tomatoes:
http://4e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=5&id=289

And one last word about sweetening. my friend is doing experiments with feeding his plants fruit juice so as to enhance flavor and bouquet. And it is working.

good luck

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