I live in s. Georgia and have been growing backyard corn for a number of years. Silver Queen has been of choice for as long as I can remember now. I have read (here as well)that corn should be rowed with 3ft spaces between the rows for optimum performance. I, like a lot of people are cramped for space, and me trying to get more out of less has slowly evolved into the following type plot. My plot serves two purposes; food and fun of course, and also serves as a privacy type fence. The plot is about 25' in length and 3' wide. I have 3 rows of corn; one on each of the extreme edges and one right down the middle. I spaced the seeds by site 10" apart for each of the three rows and the crop is well over 6ft tall and now is starting to show tassels. I find the use of mineral oil interesting. I have always planted right at last frost and sometimes had to place a plastic barrier during a few close calls. I have noticed that this is the most effective way of pest control but I still dust lightly towards the end... I think I will try the oil this year. Thank you all for the information. My question is this; am I losing out in anyway by not spacing my rows 3ft apart? I do shake my corn to facilitate pollination and my yeild has always been outstanding and full. 2% at most of a yield may be culled because of insects or insufficient pollinating......which I dont consider that to be even worth mentioning- any private grower would be happy with even less percentiles. My next question to anyone out there is; my neighbor says I do not have to shake my corn or rubb the tassels on the silks because I grow "Siver Queen." He adds that this is a hybrid variety and hybrids dont have to be pollinated. I didnt believe this; however, he said in such a knowledgeable fashion that I became confused. Is this true.........have I been going thru a lot of trouble for nothing? (lol)

I have these that might interest you: Salsify Cucumber, Grandma Rosie Queen's White (small trade, pre-1870 heirloom) Pea, Tom Thumb (ultra short, container friendly / groundcover) (pre-1870 heirloom) Shiso, Green (Perilla frutescens) Shiso, Purple (Perilla frutescens) Chia Heirloom tomatoes on my list to choose from (several pre-1870, and happy to send multiples-for-your-one with the pre-2012* tomato seeds) *I can highly recommend the Black Krim, Green Zebra, White Currant tomatoes especially. My absolute favorites for flavor and looks. I am interested in your: ARUGULA: Even Star Winter Arugula ENDIVE: De Meaux Endive LETTUCE: Mascara CRESS: Wrinkled Crinkled Cress LETTUCE: Bullet Thanks for looking, Tina / kilngod Here is a link that might be useful: Kilngod's trade page This post was edited by kilngod on Fri, Mar 15, 13 at 21:49

Hi beanz - these are all Vegetable Gardening issues rather than food preservation - the focus of this forum - so I hope you don't mind if I refer you to that forum. I put a direct link for you below. When you post there please be sure to include your zone or location in the box provided as you are clearly far ahead of most of us here in garden time. Dave PS: as to the corn stalks, yes you just pull them Here is a link that might be useful: Vegetable Gardening forum

Diane, It is just a wovenwire fence around a raised bed. The woven wire has 2" x 4" woven wire openings (I'll tell you why in a minute). The top is 1" chicken wire to trick the birds into thinking they can't get into the cage. Of course the birds could enter from the sides through the 2" x 4" openings, but they haven't. It has the standard 8' green metal fence posts hammered into the ground. With the 2" x 4" openings, I can stick an arm through the cage to pull back a husk, puncture a kernel and make sure it is at the milk stage before harvesting. The trick to making this work is to have the corn planted 12-15" inside the fence so your raccoon cannot stick his paw through the 2"x 4" opening and grab ears in a similar way. This was our first attempt at a corn cage, and we didn't put it up until we noticed a raccoon (or something) had "checked" 3 or 4 ears to see if they were ready yet. They weren't even close, but it did serve as a warning to us to do something now to protect the corn or lose it all. Once the cage was up, we didn't lose a single ear of corn from that early corn bed and I now have about 60 or 70 ears of corn in the freezer. (I realise that's not a lot, but some years the coons get every ear, and I still have mid-season and late-season corn growing.) So, soon we'll take down the cage and move it to the bed where we have the mid-season corn. We could put up a corn cage over each corn bed and leave it, but you know, if you grow corn in the same place every year, you build up corn earworms and borers in the soil, so we're going to go with a fairly portable corn cage. Essentially, it is built about the same as a fenced chicken run, except there's not fencing on the 'floor' or a concrete floor as some people have in their chicken runs to keep animals from digging under the fence. The mid-season corn is Texas Honey June and is silking now, so we may move the corn cage over to that bed tomorrow, because, true to its name, the Texas Honey June will be ready to harvest before the end of the month even though it seemed like it got off to a slow start this year. That was mainly due to our April rainfall being about one-quarter inch. The May rain helped it a lot, but it still was behind its usual 'schedule' although now it has caught up. If we lived in a less extreme climate, I'd put an electric fence around it and stop worrying about the raccoons here. We've been to so many fires, including house fires and barn fires, that originated from an electrical fence that I won't have one on our property and neither will Tim. Our grasses just dry out too much and it seems like electric fences can spark a fire fairly easily. You know, if Tim would build the Biosphere covering over my garden that I've been requesting for years, we could stop worrying about piddly little stuff like hail and raccoons. Larry, I just havested Early Sunglow last week. It was good, and some of the ears were surprisingly large considering it was early corn and also a dry year. I'd put bird netting or deer netting over the corn. I always have a pile of bird netting or deer netting in the barn to throw over whatever the birds are picking at. Tulsarose, Now, can you make that scarecrow a Grim Reaper? lol We need a Grim Reaper type character that will really scare those rascals! Dawn