How to grow small scale corn?

Good Morning Permies,

I can't really explain it, but I suck at growing corn. I get short stalks and mangy cobs.  I don't have a large space to dedicate to growing just a field of corn, so I am wondering what is the smallest footprint I can make that will give me reasonable success.

I've tried putting them into a raised four by twelve bed but that didn't go so well so the new plan is to transform an area of lawn into corn production. Ideally I'd like to interwork some other species but the question now remains to create a plan to try and get some success with corn this year on my third of an acre.

Thanks for any suggestions/assistance!

So I can't get sweet corn here, have to grow it myself (everything wants to eat it, it's not a common crop here).
I have always heard that you can't have less than 20-25 plants, and that it's best to plant them in a block rather than a long line for good wind pollination. I have found that to be sort of true but not critical, if you're willing to get out there and hand pollinate. I had really good results this year in terms of kernel output even though I had to plant several waves of plants due to weather. As long as you have one plant in pollen you can get it to the silks without too much fuss.
As for height and ugly cobs. That has been the case for me in the past 3 years as I'm dealing with weather/rainfall weirdness. We just don't get enough sun to make nice pretty corn here, I'm finally accepting, but if I get something to eat I'm happy. Trying to make peace with that....
I do plant my corn alongside squash (to shade the roots and keep weeds down) and occasionally beans, but the beans generally aren't ready to go when the corn is, and I feed the corn stalks to the rabbits, so it's not ideal.

I plant flint corn in square-ish plots of about 5-8m on a side using several hundred seeds at about 30 cm spacing. I use a no-till method with lots of mulch, which has evolved to go something like this:

1) Let whatever is growing in the spring (either a cover crop or some sort of pasture) get long and rank, then chop and drop just before planting time.

2) Sow the corn into the green manure layer.

3) Cover with wood chip.

4) Net against the sparrows, who will snip off every single green shoot as soon as it emerges.

The green manure part helps get a nice shot of nitrogen into the soil just when the corn plants need it most. One thing that I had some problems with this season was the looseness of the wood chip and the plants falling over before they got their aerial roots established. I just went out on mornings after high winds and righted the casualties, and heaped mulch around them for support. A little more labour than I wanted, but they're all good now.

For sweet corn, I plant one 2x1 m bed at a time, spaced out at 2- or 3-week intervals. Because this is in the main garden, the soil is already improved and gets a pass with the broadfork plus a topdressing of compost and biochar. Seed is planted quite close together, with a spacing of 15-20 cm for 60-70 seeds per bed. I put on a layer of chopped green mulch and top it with wood chip.

Right now there's a lot of tasseling going on and the sparrows are making themselves unwelcome by devouring pollen "grains" and this gives us somewhat uneven kernel formation in some ears. I guess I could put nets over the whole shebang, but that's more work and it's not dire enough to motivate me. What's funny is that sparrows aren't really numerous here. Just effective.

I had one good year of corn.
That was my first year of ga4dening.
That corn got watered everyday and was planted in super rich soil.
I remember 3 full cobs on most plants,4 on one of them.
There were only about 5 plants at most!

By the next year I was fully employed and corn hasn't thrived on the intermittent model of gardening I now practice.

I have considered growing them in a sub irrigated barrel planter, for consistent fertigation.

We have always had good luck growing corn.

Our bed was 4 feet by 4 feet so I consider that small scale.

We only grow sweet corn, the corn that has both white kernels and yellow kernels.

I always looked forward to having corn on the cob until the year the deer ate it all.  

Phil Stevens wrote:2) Sow the corn into the green manure layer.

3) Cover with wood chip.

How deep are you sowing and how much wood chip are you putting over the dropped weeds?

I went with a new approach this year and have found more success.

Instead of growing in a raised bed, I decided to plant into some weeded ground in a polyculture system. The corn is growing alongside squash, peas, a variety of flowers, and some other grasses. I also decided to grow flint and dent corn instead of sweet corn as I can get my hands on local sweetcorn easily enough. I am growing a mixture of 'Bloody Butcher' and some 'Glass Gem' corn to see what works best.

So far, I have some beefy stalks reaching about six foot tall and I am awaiting cob formation. So far, things are looking great! It has been a good year for corn for the local farmers so far so I'm excited.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Phil Stevens wrote:2) Sow the corn into the green manure layer.

3) Cover with wood chip.

How deep are you sowing and how much wood chip are you putting over the dropped weeds?

Sorry, just now saw this! Seeds go just barely into the surface (thumb pressure or shallow slit about 1 cm deep). After sowing the greens get broacast, followed by a 2-5 cm layer of mulch.