Fertilize corn?

rrman61 · Jun 8, 2020

I have about 150 ft of sweet corn planted.should I fertilize it at some point and if so,how?and how much to use.my soil is mixed clay.for my field peas I just add a top dressing of ammonium nitrate and they do fine

WESnIL · Jun 8, 2020

Corn is a member of the grass family so fertilizer, particular the N, would be beneficial. Peas, being a member of the legume family which can convert N from the air, would be less likely to benefit from the N in the ammonium nitrate. Are you sure it is ammonium nitrate? Ammonium sulfate sounds more like a fertilizer to me.

tomNE · Jun 8, 2020

you won't have much sweet corn without fertilizer. if your planting about a foot apart? shoot for 80lbs per acre. then find a fertilizer dealer to sell some dry fertilizer to you. give him the length and width and he'll figure out how much u need.

Tgrasher · Jun 8, 2020

Rural King and other farm stores sell a grass fertilizer 30-3-3 that works well for me.

cjunrau · Jun 8, 2020

Never have fertilized sweet corn in the garden yet or anything in the garden.
Never had a shortage of veggies yet.

BarnyardEngineering · Jun 8, 2020

150ft, as in linear feet of corn?

When I did a sweet corn patch I had 5 rows of about 30ft each so pretty similar. All I did was buy a 25lb bag of "triple 15" from the nearby garden store, and sprinkled about 10lb of it between the rows by hand and raked it in. That was after it was about ankle height, and I applied none while planting.

Figuring it out now, it was .008 acres, and 10lb of fertilizer which comes out to about 1250lb of fertilizer an acre.

coshoo · Jun 8, 2020

I take the approach of fertilizing the whole garden before planting, with manure and compost. But still sprinkle a little commercial along the corn rows if they start looking a little lighter green than they should.

sourgum · Jun 8, 2020

A balanced fertilizer as barnyard suggested is best for sweet corn, such as 15-15-15 . Corn uses all three nutrients ( N-P-K ) out of the ground to produce a crop.

fastfarmall · Jun 8, 2020

Ammonium Nitrate is 34-0-0, it is a very good source on N, also a explosive, that's what they used to blew up the Mura Building in Oklahoma City. Ammonium Sulfate is 21-0-0-24, the 24 is sulfur !

David G · Jun 8, 2020

Each nutrient has a purpose, but corn likes a lot of N.

paul · Jun 8, 2020

I don’t have a sweet corn chart, but this field corn at 75 bu yield might be close.

The far right numbers is what the plant would use to support both the green plant itself as well as the ear of corn.

Your ground has some of those things in it already.

Most farmers test the ground to know about what is available in the ground, and then add enough of each thing to cover the number on the left.

Typically there isn’t enough N in the ground to grow good corn to its full potential. So that is the one you probably want to add more of.

If your ground is in good shape you might only need a little P and K added to keep up with the removal of the grain itself. The part the green plant uses, do you mulch the stalks back into the ground or add manure to your garden, or do you haul away all the old stalks and remove those nutrients as well?

If you don’t want complicated, just add a handful of 15-15-15 and call it good, but over time that kind of gets your soil out of whack, as you end up short on some and over supplying other of the three main nutrients..........

Paul

paul · Jun 8, 2020

Didn’t mean to pick on you Sourgum, I meant to reply to the original post.

We farmers get kind of a bad reputation for over fertilizing and causing the entire death of the Gulf of Mexico, while most of us do the complicated math these days and spoon feed the amount of fertilizer the crop uses per year.

Meanwhile, gardeners throw out handfuls of fertilizer without knowing what they have, what they need, or how it all works, and that is just fine with most......

Just wanted to show the scientific method.

Paul

the tractor vet · Jun 8, 2020

Not being the expert here but have planted a couple rows of sweet corn in my time i use what is in the planter at the time . So the sweet corn got up to 450 lbs per acre between what the planter put on , what was broad cast and what was knifed in . When i was young the planter put on 400 lbs to the acre or real close depending on the fert. , that took time and lots of bag handling stopping to fill every two rounds . Then we started broad casting and incorporating . The best sweet corn was the one year it got a double dose of incorporated and the in row setting was set up to the old way of 400 and acre . darn near needed a log skidder to log out the ears.

rrman61 · Jun 8, 2020

Now that you mention it my dad used triple 15 on some of his
garden but that was 30 years ago.i had forgot what type went
for which crop

4520BW · Jun 8, 2020

Corn loves its N. I do nitrate mine when I do the field corn,about 200 lbs of 28 per acre.

David G · Jun 8, 2020

I would disagree on that mixture, needs much more N.

BarnyardEngineering · Jun 8, 2020

(quoted from post at 09:55:53 06/08/20) I would disagree on that mixture, needs much more N.

At 1250lbs/acre application rate, it had plenty of N using triple 15.

aFORDable · Jun 8, 2020

We raise sweet corn to sell and when planted we fertilize with 10-10-10 @ 500# an acre. We side dress 33-0-0 @ 200# an acre last cultivating. That has worked well for us over the years. A soil test tells us how our PH is doing and is adjusted from there if needed.

David G · Jun 8, 2020

Ah, the side dressing makes up the N

Hobo,NC · Jun 8, 2020

When I plant I put the fertilizer down with the tractor then when its about 16" tall side dress while cultivating with the tractor I would guess about 10 lbs for a 100 ft row each time I use 10-10-10...

When I see the first tassels I add Ammonium Nitrate by hand around a bottle cap to each stalk... I wait till I know its gonna rain/storm... If no rain in site I poke a hole with a tobacco stick close to the stalk and add the Ammonium Nitrate, Ammonium Nitrate will burn it up play safe...

I will keep the 15-15-15 in mind... : )

Fertilize corn?

Well-known Member

Member

Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Similar threads