from
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Looking to Try Something New?
Growing Corn from Transplants
The best part of farming is that you are in control of what crops you grow
- and how. I have the tendency to get a little bored, so there is always
something new and different on the farm. In an attempt to get earlier and
more productive sweet corn over the last two years, I have tried
transplanting seedlings.
First the results, and then the how. In 2000, a planting of Seneca
Arrowhead that was transplanted and
row covered, matured nine days earlier than a planting that was
seeded and row covered. The difference
in 2001 was 11 days with Fleet (three days earlier than Arrowhead).
The stand of transplants had a yield
of 98%, where the seeded results were only in the 50% range with
maturity very erratic mostly due to
uneven germination.
Now the how. The procedure is very straightforward and can be
accomplished with ordinary equipment.
The first step is to check germination rates by seeding a sample tray
in the greenhouse and carefully
counting the quality seedlings. The reason for this is to assure that
the plugs will have high counts when
they are transplanted. For example, the Arrowhead germination was in
excess of 95%, Tomahawk was
only about 80% with many plugs that had only one seedling. The plugs
are 162s and two seeds were
planted in each one. The time from seed to transplant was two weeks
in my greenhouse with bottom heat
and good humidity control. When testing, grow the seedlings long
enough to determine at what age they
will transplant easily, but not so large that they are stressed.
During the last five days before planting, we
withheld water to strengthen the stems and force good root
development. Our middle transplanting was
delayed until the transplants were three weeks old. The crop was
almost a total failure due to stress
because of a lack of growing space in the plugs.
Transplanting the seeds is simple. You can use a mechanical
transplanter, but we found it faster to plant
by hand - and a carousel-type planter might be even faster. The rows
are 36" on center and I used a
marking wheel on the three-point hitch set at 12". The plugs are
placed in shallow water to loosen the soil
from the tray. One person places the plugs, and another two plant.
Two plants per plug allowed us to
handle fewer plugs and still achieve a 6" on center plant spacing.
The 36" rows and the 12" spacing
yields about 28,000 plants per acre. Three of us were able to plant
about 3,000 plugs per hour.
Last but not least. The last step was to give the plugs a drench of
water with fish/seaweed fertilizer. I
have a water tank mounted on the cultivating tractor and a hose that
lines up over the row of plants.This
step means that we don't have to set up irrigation. The 2001 season
was a challenge in May and June
because the lack of rainfall, so we irrigated twice to maintain
growth. We also irrigated direct-seeded
crops which is unheard of on my soils at that time of year when
moisture levels are generally high.
I used a 35'-wide floating row cover and covered eight rows. I doubt
transplanting without the row cover
would have been successful. The best part of using the plugs is that
it eliminated about two cultivations
and the plants were ahead of the weed pressure.
FIELD NOTES
Ed Person, Ledgewood Farm
Moultonborough, NH
First published in
Proceedings of
the New England Vegetable
and Berry Conference 2001
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