Maize Cultivation Technology

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Growing corn is very profitable, especially when you have a large farm and in addition to a vegetable garden, poultry and animals live on your garden plot. Not only grain will be used for feed, which birds will peck with pleasure and pigs will eat, but also stems - they are given to sheep, and goats, and cows. But what can I say - who of us does not like to feast on fragrant hot boiled cobs in the summer, collected from the garden in milky-wax ripeness

Features of corn

Corn belongs to the group of cross-pollinated crops. And one of its features is the separate placement of inflorescences. The male is a large panicle at the top of the shoot. And the female ones are future cobs that hide in the axils of the leaves. Closer to the male inflorescence, cobs are not formed.

As for the quality of corn heads, those that are located on the stalk higher than others develop better. They lay up to 1000 grains, and sometimes weigh up to half a kilo. And the lower specimens form coarse grains, which have excellent sowing qualities.

Corn belongs to heat-loving plants, but at the same time it is able to withstand short-term frosts up to -2 … -3 ° С. In addition to warmth, the plant loves the sun very much. If there is insufficient lighting in the place chosen for planting, the corn will develop poorly, and the cobs may not form a marketable form.

Let's start sowing corn

Sowing is started when the soil temperature at a depth of 10 cm averages + 9 ° C. The seeds are embedded in the soil to a depth of 5 to 10 cm. It depends on the timing of sowing - the earlier they are, the closer the grains are to the surface. Wells for planting are made according to the scheme 70 x 70 cm. Sowing is carried out in a nesting way, 4-5 seeds are placed in each hole.

Care of corn seedlings in the beds

Seedlings are shown after a week and a half from the day of sowing. Until this moment, you need to have time to carry out the harrowing. It is carried out perpendicular to the direction of the rows in order to loosen the ground and prevent the emergence of weeds. It is advisable to repeat this procedure again, when a couple of leaves are formed in the seedlings.

When the seedlings have 3-4 leaves, the extra weak specimens are removed from each nest. Caring for the rest consists in weeding and loosening the beds. Until the root system of maize has grown stronger, it is helped by deeper loosening - to a depth of about 12 cm. As it develops, this rate is reduced.

Loosening is recommended to be carried out after irrigation or past rain. And if it is not always possible to guess with the rain, then when watering is performed 2-3 times during the growing period after irrigation, mineral fertilizing is carried out, and then fertilizers are buried in the soil using loosening.

Top dressing and watering of corn

As for fertilizing, it is useful for the first time to apply nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. To do this, 1 sq. M. the area of the beds is used:

• ammonium nitrate - 2 g;

• superphosphate - 2 g.

Two weeks later, the procedure is repeated, but a double dose is already used with the addition of potassium fertilizers.

Watering is performed 3-4 times. It depends on the state of the weather and the phase of the plant - it is imperative to irrigate when panicles flowering and grains are pouring.

Special agricultural techniques for caring for corn

Corn is a monoecious plant. And it would be wise to help him with reproduction. To do this, during the flowering of panicles on the top of the corn, additional artificial pollination is carried out. This trick will increase the grain yield in your garden beds.

And those stepchildren that are formed on the lower above-ground nodes are recommended to be removed from the plant. The cobs in them usually do not ripen, and they will spend the strength of corn on their development. This is especially true in those vegetable gardens where it is not possible to provide sufficient moisture for the corn plantings.