Bogus corn advice?!

Ok, so this year due to my impatience, an attempt to amuse my kids and love of doing what i am told not to, we started a couple dozen corn kernels in peat pots...

Now spring came upon us late, and i had tons of other stuff to do...

So, by the time the corn was planted it was 9+ inches tall had many leaves and was rooting through the pots. Mind you these poor plants were abused and neglected at times before hitting dirt. Well, they look fantastic, they've taken off and show no ill signs of being tortured.

Time will tell if they are indeed several weeks ahead of the direct seeded corn, or if it catches up. Perhaps they'll just keel over dead this afternoon, though i doubt it :) I will update this as time goes on, but there are so many things i transplanted due to short season, cucumbers, squash, melons, beans and corn. They all seem to do fine...

Edited to ask... How many of you transplant the "untransplantables" ?


This message was edited Jun 11, 2006 8:04 AM

Virtually anything can be transplanted in pot. Traditionally some plants were grown in hot beds/cold frames and bare root transplanted. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, many brassicas do well with this method. Corn does not handle bare root transplanting well and most of us planted by the acre. Today you can actually transplant acres using plant cube and powered transplanters designed to handle cubes..

How big is your place Farmerdill?

I often find your name on posts i get the best info from. Thanks!

Not very big, but I still plant 3 - 5 lbs of corn. Getting too old to handle more than a couple of acres any more. Most of that is corn, peas and watermelons.

lol only a couple of acres...at times my puny lill 10 tomatoes run me nuts, how you do all the rest is just a miricle to me.

My entire property counting the house is 1/2 acre. My veggies probably cover less than 1/8 and I am always behind. 2 or 3 acres! Wow! I would have to be hospitalized.

I garden a 20x40' spot in my backyard and could and perhaps should have taken more but it's pretty well established and the next owner might not appreciate a veg garden anyway...but we get more cukes, squash and tomatoes than anything! Only a few nights did we enjoy peas, beans and sweet corn. Try the sweet corn varieties if you can....I can eat unsalted and buttered straight from the garden! Delicious!

We did find that our tomato seeds always produce weak plants no matter where purchased or what seed so this year ended up buying plants from the nursery and will continue unless there is some trick that's evaded me so far to getting them to grow???

Tir... I've had fabulous luck starting tomatoes from seed using Carolyn's method... I think there's a link in the "sticky" at the top of the tomato forum.

Corn is the only veggie that DH has not let me plant. He said, "We are not a farm. We will not grow corn. We will buy all the corn you want from Mayne's (local grower down the road)." Well, since Mr. Mayne has started growing my all time favorite corn, 'Honey Select', that works for me... but I wanted to try growing cucumbers up the corn stalks!

Back O/T, I have started & transplanted "untransplantable" herbs like parsley with no problem, as long as I give their roots enough time to fill the little pot before setting out in the garden (I start seeds in a 1" deep tray of potting mix, then transplant clumps to 2 inch pots or cell packs).

I have also transplanted "untransplantable" poppies, which I know is not a vegetable, but it's still something that is supposedly very sensitive to root disturbance. They do fine for me, and they come along much better when started under the lights in early spring. I use peat pots and pop the bottoms off before transplanting, and loosen the sides up a bit, but I don't totally "unpot" them. I just let the peat pot go into the soil with it.

I started my corn indoors in March, transplanted in May and they are almost my height and I am 5'2"!! (No short jokes please).

When I started my garden last year I listened to someone who said not to make the raised beds any wider than two or three feet. Looking at the garden later and figuring out how much growing space is wasted by so many unnecessary aisles I dug in and widened all the beds to 4', even though there were a lot of plants already growing in the beds.

Widening one bed required moving 24' of potatoes already about 8" high. I found if you dig deep enough and grab enough undisturbed soil, they transplant ok. I even managed to move about 5 or 6' of a row of small carrots. I don't really recommend it though. Good planning is a better idea.

Wayne