Dry farming corn

I'm in SW Missouri,  zone 6a. We have very hot, dry summers here, and I do not have a lot of water to work with. Does anyone know the spacing for growing Indian corn in a dry farming situation? I'll be deep mulching, but I need to know how far apart to place the plants.

Springfield Missouri receives about the same amount of rain as what I apply to my fields via irrigation. I allow 2.5 square feet for each corn plant. I don't use mulch or compost.

Thank you! All I  could find was the spacing for irrigated farming, which was less than a foot between plants! Far too close for what I'm doing.

Great question, very conditional depending on particular climate, soil, some watering, etc - since I do some irrigation on my small patches here in KY, I space about 1 foot apart, but will be trying further spacing next season as I have difficulty keeping up with water in dry spells.

Very interesting videos of a Hopi person named Ahkima on youtube. 4 steps between planting every direction, each spot gets a "small handful" of seed - I'm thinking 10-15, which is thinned after a couple weeks of sprouting to the best 5-7 ones.

Since corn is wind pollinated, and for waters sake we are spreading them out, I like Ahkima's way of small close knit groups of 5 yet they are 10' or so spacing between each one.

Here are the two links to Ahkima's corn.

https://youtu.be/LWm2AExHLik?si=kPM2vkIaPwmMpd31
https://youtu.be/2U_I_M-5dsw?si=24hFOrsRLRkmOvqi

Last year was very very dry here. I planted corn in hills with 3-6 feet between hills, 1-4 plants per hill. Most hills were about 4 feet apart. I have no irrigation, no hose in that garden. I carried water from the house about 50 yards away. Very tiresome, so only really critical things got any water. If the corn leaves were curling that hill would get a slug of water. The driest hills got straw mulch, the others dry soil mulch. That was sufficient and got a pretty good harvest.

Early June and early July pics:

Thank you all so much!  I will definitely check out those links.  We've had almost no rain for the last two months and probably won't get much more for the next month and a half. My only source of water is a pond about 50 yards away, and I'll have to carry the water in buckets. This is the only time I can start the corn though, as we're surrounded by commercial farms and my corn is heirloom Indian corn from a heritage project. I can't let the plants have a chance for cross pollination.

It sounds tricky if you want to both avoid the cross pollination window and time your corn's water demand with natural precipitation. Say the tasseling of surrounding corn field happens in July and your corn tassels weeks after that, the plants will be growing mostly through the dry months of July and August.  Do you think you can get your corn planted early to beat the commercial corn? Usually April and May see the most precipitation, maybe enough to carry the plants through the flash drought. You will also have a longer season for dent corn to mature.

Latest sweet corn planting date suggested by MU is August 1st. I planted my Indian corn on July 19th but I am really pushing the limit as the first frost date is Oct 15th here.

Annette Henry wrote: This is the only time I can start the corn though, as we're surrounded by commercial farms and my corn is heirloom Indian corn from a heritage project. I can't let the plants have a chance for cross pollination.

Do you have a solid idea how many days from planting to pollination for your corn? Many of the open-pollinated old varieties are shorter season than current commercial varieties (not all). If your corn is a shorter days-to-pollination corn than the hybrids used nearby, you are Okay to go ahead and plant when they do, or before they do. Planting later might actually be worse!

I think Mary's advice above, to try planting earlier, might be the way to go. But it depends on if your corn is shorter or longer days to pollination than the hybrid corns. In my own case my corn is faster, but not enough faster to completely eliminate crossing, especially since I replant any hills that don't come up, so I have mixed timing on pollination. Since you want 100% non-cross-pollination, avoid replanting barren hills.

How far away is your corn from the hybrid corn? Also, what color is your corn? Color of leaves, cobs, silks and tassels etc? Another way to reduce crossing is to select your corn to look very different from hybrid corn.

When harvesting and when selecting seeds for next year:
1) Avoid yellow seeds, since by far most hybrid corn is yellow.
2) Avoid red cobs because by far most hybrid corn has red cobs.
3) Cut out of your field any corn plants with leaves pointing straight up. Most open-pollinated corn has horizontally oriented leaves. Hybrid leaves point up.

Basically, look carefully at a field of hybrid corn, and at your own corn, and cut out anything that looks like hybrid crosses.

Can you post pics of your own corn? At various growing stages?

My corn is a multi color that takes 95 days, which is just the amount of time I have left in the season. I preplanted the corn in trays and will plant out in the garden next week. This also the first thing going in a new garden. We bought 12 acres last year and our new mobile home should be installed next month. Right now I'm driving down once a week to get the garden in, set up the greenhouse,  etc.

As far as the commercial farms go, we're surrounded. Most of their crops are corn and soybeans. This year's crop is mostly going for seed for next year.  With any luck, I'll have seed for a larger field of corn, and I'll also have some winter what growing.

That's winter wheat, stupid auto correct,  lol. I will plant early next year, and I'll be planting a lot of different grains to see what grows well here. The corn is the only thing I've been worried about. Not only is this a new homestead, but it's also a new zone, so there's plenty to experiment with.

Oh, and the corn came from the Heirloom Seed Project at the Landis Valley living history museum.  I was only able to get one pack of seeds of their corn so I hope it does well.

The Springfield airport reports 5 inches of rain for July, which is an inch more than I apply to my irrigated fields.

Official records from monitoring stations are pretty worthless, implying that the general area is the same. I don't know what official records from Louisville Ky or Cincinnati, OH about equal distant on opposite sides of me, might have recorded officially this year but in the past week and a half my rain gage measured about 5.5 inches. In the six weeks before that it measured zero. During those dry weeks a cookout at my nephew's house about ten miles away was interrupted with what we call a gully washer, as in you can't see through it, you can't drive in it, but not a drop of it fell at my house.

As far a corn spacing, I plant mine rather haphazardly, but I'd say maybe six to ten inches apart in the row and the rows spaced about two feet apart. I do some mulching but not evenly or religiously and rarely, I do water a little bit.  As far as soil fertility and conditions, mine is in pretty good shape, having been improved with organic materials for close to thirty years and free of chemicals for eighty or more. I rarely water, if and it is rare, that it rains appropriately I get three or maybe even four nice ears per stalk. This year it looks like I'll get two at the most, and they are a bit undersized. The recent rain was just too late, a lot of the secondary ears had already aborted. Third and fourth ears never had a chance.

Congratulations on getting your new farm! How do you prep your garden area? Is it just native soil or have you hauled in lots of compost and organic matters to amend it? I assume the corns are started in soilless potting mix and if so, the texture will be very different from mineral soil and will dry out quickly. Plants will take longer to overcome transplant shock too. Currently SW corner missouri abnormally dry but it can develop into drought quickly.

Since the seeds are hard to come by, will you consider keeping a few seedlings for growing in big containers filled with potting soil? You wil be able to water and take care of them till you move to the new site. Day light and heat will go downhill quickly in late September, by that time the corn growth rate will slow down significantly. In case there is an early frost and the ears are not ready, the container corn has the advantage of being mobile and can be sheltered in the greenhouse.

Annette Henry wrote:Oh, and the corn came from the Heirloom Seed Project at the Landis Valley living history museum.  I was only able to get one pack of seeds of their corn so I hope it does well.

I hope you can get more seeds in the future. Sounds like a narrow genetic base.

It is very difficult to maintain a narrow genetic base of corn in a small garden. It's commonly recommended that a field of at least two hundred plants is needed and to save seed from at least one hundred of them each year or it will start to decline from what is called genetic depression or inbreeding. Most seed packets do not contain that many seeds to start with and my garden is too small for it anyway.

Even though I can't preserve the historic aspect of a particular variety, I found that by mixing several varieties with similar qualities but by different names and from different sources I was able to make my own varieties that don't have to be grown in such large patches. If you plant seed that are not all genetically identical you can eliminate genetic depression and reduce the necessary number of plants in the patch.  Doing that for several years is why I can grow my corn a bit crowded and with less watering but still, weather permitting harvest multiple ears per stalk, or at least one nice ear, even if it doesn't rain for a long time.

Annette Henry wrote:My corn is a multi color that takes 95 days,

So, a pretty short-season corn. That's good; makes it easier next year. It is very unlikely any common hybrid in S Missouri is that early. With your long summers farmers will be taking advantage of the longer growing season and planting much longer-season crops. So just aim to plant when they do and should be fine. Even a little later is 'probably' Okay.

For this year, all hybrid corn should be long since done pollinating, so you are very safe to plant now, though I wonder if the corn will do well planted this late. Interesting to find out. Please post a late-season update!

This year I  am using just native soil.  I'll be amending as much as I can in late fall, early winter as I clean out my coop. I'm very wary of importing something I shouldn't with commercial imports.

I'm also going to be buying more seed to use next spring from the same source. I only have about 80 plants currently and as has been said, that's not enough to begin a breeding program. I will have about half an acre next season in corn.  I want to use the red and purple seeds to continue planting with and use the rest to feed my chickens.  

We'll see how things work out.  I will be posting pics. Right now the plants are at about one and a half weeks and I will be planting them this weekend as we have a cold front moving in, bringing the tempd down from high 90s to the 80s.

Corn seedlings are optimally transplanted at V1 stage with three visible leaves and one leaf collar. At this time the nodal roots are not growing out yet. Give each plant one quart of water so the roots can make good contact with the soil. Weather wise, timing is perfect in the next several days.

I like this source for native seeds of all types and they have several types of drought adapted corn. They can tell you what you need to know regarding planting, growing, and harvesting their varieties.
https://www.nativeseeds.org/pages/seeds

Alabama has been having early and crazy hot summers in the past few years, excluding this year,( just to keep us on our toes.) I had a friend of a friend who was a popular, local gardener who was known for having corn available before everyone else. I found out that his method was to plant it in January. I wish he was still around so I could ask him about details but I’m going to try it this year and see if I can beat the heat. He told our friend that it might sprout and freeze, sometimes repeatedly, but that it would come right back as soon as the ground gets warm enough.

I realize that it’s not exactly what you asked but it might be a reasonable thing for you to try too. In any case, best of luck! Corn is my absolute favorite crop, especially to bring in warm from the garden and sit down to eat it in just a few minutes, heavenly!

Just a thought:

Traditional practices in the southwest include planting in apparently dry stream beds. Often times there is water making its way downhill even when the surface is dry.

I wonder if you could make use of the fact that in some locations, the subsoil has more moisture than others.  It’s possible that the subsurface moisture is collecting in the same places we see liquid water collect when it is on the surface.

ONE of the best things you can do in any growing situation is, adjust the soil to control water loss.  For example, if you have sandy soil, like we do here in the desert of Eastern Washington, you're going to have to throw a lot of water at whatever you're growing to get positive results.

The amount of water you need to pull that off can be greatly altered by adding to the soil things that hold water. Two things to look into to that end are, charcoal and zeolite.

The charcoal doesn't even have to be activated, but, if not activated (cooked in a low oxygen atmosphere to a high temp to fracture it), you'll just need more of it.

The charcoal can be easy to come by. Many make their own. One farmer would doze large shallow pits (a couple feet deep), throw a lot of wood in to the pit, light it and, after it was going good, push dirt over it to allow it to smolder and make charcoal.  Then he would work it into the soil.

Zeolite can be bought by the ton.  I haven't checked in years, but it can be as low as $70.00/ton in quantity.  Interestingly, just a jar full bought at a health food store can run $60.00.

Both these things will hold water and reduce how much applied water quickly drains out.  

The zeolite is even used by NASA by pre-charging it with fertilizers for use in space experiments.

Look into these things. They are fascinating for those wanting more out of their growing soil.

Well the corn is planted, and fortunately we're having a cool down the last few days along with some rain.  Lots of clouds so it helps with the transplants.  My new garden is on a bit of a slope, so I planted the patch at the bottom to catch any rain coming down from the top.  I've also planted in bunches of four to five and mulched heavily.  Now this is totally a test patch! as my field crops are going to have it rough next year.  So, I have not improved the soil which is clay.  I'm just testing the water/rain situation and hope to get enough of a crop to add to my spring purchase of new seed.  I won't even have a house down on the farm for another month.  

Next month when I plant my fall crops - carrots, beets, maybe some cabbage, lettuce etc, I'll add in both purchased garden soil (I got a great deal on left overs last year and it's been sitting so I hope any not so good additions have a chance to leach out) and mulch with straw bales that have been sitting for most of a year.  After that harvest, I'm going to add in my old chicken manure and the wood ash from last winter and till all that in.  Hopefully, with all of that I'll have ok garden soil to work with next spring.  

As for my field crops, well the land was a 12 acre pasture that hadn't been improved, not even limed, for years before I bought it.  I'm going to try and put down large tarps to kill off the grass on an acre before I hopefully will get it plowed next spring/summer.  I'll also be planting a test patch of winter wheat.  I've got some of the really old varieties of wheat that are said to be good for clay soils.  We'll see how that works out as well as I don't even know if I'll like using those types in bread.

Lots of experimenting to do!  Can't wait to see what comes of it!

Annette Henry wrote:I'm in SW Missouri,  zone 6a. We have very hot, dry summers here, and I do not have a lot of water to work with. Does anyone know the spacing for growing Indian corn in a dry farming situation? I'll be deep mulching, but I need to know how far apart to place the plants.

8 - 12 inches is normal, but here in Arizona, we plant 6 inches apart for best results. We follow the three sisters method because the ground cover retains moisture and the beans and corn support each other in different ways.

Update!

Well, for the first week things went gangbusters good.  The corn doubled in size and there were no problems of drying out and dying except a very few on the outer edges of the patch.

Week two, no need for additional water save for a couple on the outer rows, but there was a little bug damage.  A few holes certainly aren't going to bother me as one of the things I love about my new place is the fact that it is teeming with life!  Bugs, birds, deer, raccoons, etc.

Week three - u-oh.  The bug damage isn't so little anymore.  It seems I have lots of grasshoppers and they found the corn patch.  Well, this is exactly why I was doing the test patch in the first place.  Now I know that I need lots of chickens and guineas to keep the hopper population down to a reasonable amount.   That isn't a problem as I was already working on putting up a greenhouse to house the chickens.  Now I know that I need to buy a lot more than I had originally planned on.  That's not a bad thing, lol.

Does anyone here plant the "three sisters method" for corn. I am in zone 9a and have had some luck with heirloom yellow corn. Next year going to try Hopi Blue. Any pointers?

Lisa Gabrielle wrote:Does anyone here plant the "three sisters method" for corn. I am in zone 9a and have had some luck with heirloom yellow corn. Next year going to try Hopi Blue. Any pointers?

Your pics are beautiful! Looks like you already have a handle on 3 sisters. I have been doing this for quite a few years but really got serious 2 years ago. Have a long post here:
https://permies.com/t/249459/Sisters-Garden-Year

Your climate is pretty different from mine, so take any suggestions with a grain of salt. I plant in hills 5-6 feet apart so there is enough sun for the other plants. Particularly squash needs plenty of sun. Beans go anywhere there is a gap. Squash is planted in the middle of the rows between the hills, as far from the corn hills as possible. I also plant lots of other things in between the corn hills. Tomatoes, potatoes, cantaloupe etc. I think ending up with 3 stalks of corn per hill is about right, but I plant a lot more and if too many grow I pull out the weaker looking ones when they are 1-2 feet tall, or any plants that have bug damage by that stage. Really at any stage if a stalk looks diseased or buggy I yank it out.

Annette Henry wrote:Update!

Well, for the first week things went gangbusters good.  The corn doubled in size and there were no problems of drying out and dying except a very few on the outer edges of the patch.

Week two, no need for additional water save for a couple on the outer rows, but there was a little bug damage.  A few holes certainly aren't going to bother me as one of the things I love about my new place is the fact that it is teeming with life!  Bugs, birds, deer, raccoons, etc.

Week three - u-oh.  The bug damage isn't so little anymore.  It seems I have lots of grasshoppers and they found the corn patch.  Well, this is exactly why I was doing the test patch in the first place.  Now I know that I need lots of chickens and guineas to keep the hopper population down to a reasonable amount.   That isn't a problem as I was already working on putting up a greenhouse to house the chickens.  Now I know that I need to buy a lot more than I had originally planned on.  That's not a bad thing, lol.

How did it all go?

While the corn grew well, (planting with a good watering at planting time and spot watering as needed with deep mulch), the pollination sucked.  Very few ears had many kernels I think this was because of the constant wind, so next year I'm planning on planting on a grid rather than in hills.  What corn I did get was very nice, so I'm going to go back to that variety and either plant as soon as the farmers around here start tilling or wait until three weeks after they have planted theirs.  With a short term crop I'm hoping to get around their pollination times.  I'm also happy to report that none of the deer I see from my windows have tried to eat what corn there is!  The fence kept them out - for now.  I think right now they're more concerned about all the activity around my new place. lol  Once they get used to that all bets are off.

Thank you to everyone who offered advice!