Free Range Corn: Part 4: GenX Corn

Anyway there were no piglets this spring and I was worried. In spring the pen was mostly dirt but it wouldn’t last. It would be a nearly impassible jungle in a few months. Why not try something different?

I hit upon the idea of free range corn.

I got in there with my tractor and disked a small area. I did about what I could manage within the turning radius of a tractor. In the post pig springtime, the whole place was soft soil. As a seedbed it looked great! A million generations of cowshit (from before I bought the place) and many dozens of pigs I’ve raised there have made it an organic madhouse of fertility.

How could it be anything but a great spot to jam a few corn seeds?

I had the idea of doing a “three sisters” companion planting. To do this you make little hills. In the hill you plant corn, beans, and squash. The corn grows tall, the beans climb on the cornstalks, and the squash flows out over the area keeping competing weed in check. It seems like a genius move and one that will make the usual “cartesian plane or die trying” mechanized gardener have a heart attack.

That was the plan but I didn’t have time. Just when the soil was the right temperature to plant, a thousand other things became urgent. This happens every summer. It would only take an hour or two to push up little hills with the tractor bucket. I wasn’t sure of the timing for planting. Do you plant the corn, beans, and squash all at once?

I gave up. The meager hour or two to make little hills for the sisters was more labor than I had to give. I literally planted half of two packets of corn seed in straight lines almost at a run. I did it one morning when I had to get going fast. The last seed hit the dirt and was covered with soil literally minutes before I departed on a week-long trip.

Call it a half-success. Only a small percentage of the available area got planted but something got planted. Something is more than nothing. I wound up driving to my destination wearing mud coated boots. I honestly used every possible moment I had. See what I mean about being busy? (Also, I’m the kind of guy that will arrive on time but with mud on his boots.)

By the time I returned from my trip, the weeds were already beginning to advance. I couldn’t do much about it. First I had to fight the lawn to a draw. Then, I hurriedly stacked some firewood. By then the pig pen was already awash in vegetation.

But some of it was corn!

I went in there with the disk and made some of the most delicate and precise turns you’ve ever seen a tractor make. I crushed some of the competing weeds; maybe half of the competing biomass. That gave the corn a chance to grow.

Alas, my germination rate sucked. I planted (I estimate) 150 seeds and only 23 germinated!

Shit!

I think that’s exactly the problem. The soil was “too rich”. I’m not sure the technical term for “too rich” but I’d planted corn seeds in pure corn cocaine and the seeds just didn’t find their ass with both hands. Those that did germinate grew just fine… but I wish I’d double or triple planted. Then again I’d planted in a huge rush and it was more an experiment than a production run.

Lesson learned. Shitty germination is a thing I need to plan for if I’m going to do free range corn in the richest soil I’ve got. That’s why I did the experiment. You need to try things to learn things. I have almost no spare labor so I wanted to try “almost no labor” corn crops.

I was hopeful my tiny cohort of stalks would survive but also was full of doubt. I wasn’t even sure if they’d be able to pollinate each other. Corn are wind pollinators, they need a certain amount of other corn. 23 was pretty sparse!

For the next several weeks I did very little maintenance/gardening; literally the absolute minimum. Knowing the other weeds would go apeshit, I stomped a few foot radius around each of the two dozen little corn stalks. I didn’t dink around with a roto-tiller (which I don’t own) or burn my precious time lovingly caring for the corn. This wasn’t helicopter parent corn. It was Gen-X corn. It was “raise yourself, I’ve got shit to do” corn.

It held it’s own for a while but then started to lose the fight. I dumped some rotten hay bales around the corn stalks as mulch. That seemed to do wonders. Each stalk had about 2’ radius of area to dominate. 3’ would have been better but I ran out of mulch.

It looked nothing like a garden. It was an abandoned pig pen with a few odd looking weeds among the more mundane weeds with uneven globs of rotten hay underfoot. Butt ugly! But I was trying something new. I wanted to let things run their course… for science!

“Good luck 23 corn stalks,” I sighed, “you’re on your own.”

Someday when I retire I might have time to indulge in actual gardening. I’m sure it’s fun.

The weeds grew and the corn grew in a constant arms race. Occasionally I’d wander through it to stomp down amazingly aggressive weeds that were in the near vicinity of a corn stalk but I didn’t do much. Nor did I water anything. It rains. Fuck hoses!

One day I blasted my dirt bike through waist high weeds for no reason whatsoever. I was probably under the influence of Metallica and bravado. I barely dodged the few corn stalks and wound up wrapping chest high weeds all over the bike. It seemed like the thing to do. It was a hoot! It barely damaged the weeds which seemed to get torn to bits and I thrashed over them but then pop up more or less unaffected in my wake. I got out of there before I broke me or the bike. I don’t recommend “weeding with a dirt bike” but at least I tried it.

Which brings me to now. Some of the weeds are well above head high. Straining my eyes from the battered pig gate I can see some corn stalks jostling for position. They are doing OK bit there are nearby weeds that never fell to the disk or motorcycle or mulch and they’re easily 2’ taller. From a distance I’d say the tallest stuff is 8’. I think most of it is a weed called “pigweed”. Pigs love that shit. Next year, the piglets are going to be very happy! (If I get the fence built!) Don’t quote me on botanical information… it’s a tall green plant that ain’t corn and I’ve seen pigs eat it. That’s all I really know.

Is there corn to eat? Today’s the day I find out.

I’m goin’ in!

It’s pretty sketchy. It’ll be no fun wading through waist deep weeds and skirting around much taller patches. Some of it is prickly. Thistles? For all I know there could be a damn gorilla in there. Wish me luck!