Can you feed your family for a year with ¼ acre of corn? Prob­a­bly! Come learn some of the basics of growing field corn and dif­fer­ent ways to prepare it.

AdAgrA 2023: Digging Deeper

<p>Can you feed your family for a year with ¼ acre of corn? Prob­a­bly! Come learn some of the basics of growing field corn and dif­fer­ent ways to prepare it.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Special Interests

Daniel Nicholls

Growing and Using Corn

We're gonna get started with a word of prayer, and go from there.

Father in heaven, thank you for the opportunity to be here, to be together, to share this time, to share the blessings that you have given us to, as it were, dig deeper into the mine of truth that is in your Word, but also to learn to dig deeper into everything that it is that we do for you, including agriculture.

And I ask for your blessing, I ask for your spirit, I ask for wisdom that I don't have, and I ask for us all to be able to have your spirit as well for understanding, including myself.

And thank you that we can come to you and ask for these things and offer our gratitude in Jesus name.

How many people, just curious to know where we're working with, How many people have grown any kind of corn, sweet corn or field corn, on and like home garden anything like that.

Awesome more than an acre More than 20 acres.

I'm gonna be asking you questions later Okay So corn as we know it today was not always like it is.

Corn was originally domesticated in Central America.

If you ask modern secular archaeologists, they'll tell you it was something like 10, 000 years ago or whatever.

I don't remember the exact date, but the original specimens of corn that have been found in digs in Central America look like what is on your left.

So it actually looks something more like wheat.

And each kernel actually had a husk on it, similar to what you see on the full corn husk now.

So the Central Americans started selectively breeding this useful grain over the course of time.

I'm not totally sure because I'm getting my information from secular archaeologists.

But we know for sure that corn in its modern form was the predominant staple grain in Central America at least 500 years before Europeans arrived in North America.

It was eaten by the time Europeans arrived.

It was eaten from the tip of South America, clear on up into kind of the northern parts of the States and even a little bit of Canada.

As you know, it tends to appreciate warmer weather and longer seasons.

Though modern corn has been bred to have a shorter season, we're used to like 75 and 90-day sweet corn.

Most of the more heirloom varieties of field corn, which is all that Native Americans were using, most of those are 120 day crops.

So you can imagine if you're going up further north and your last frost is anywhere after mid-May and you've got a 120-day crop that you have to actually get to the point that it's dry enough to store, you can see why it didn't make it much farther north.

But it was grown widely through the warmer climates in all of the Americas long long long before Europeans arrived.

Okay, so corn did actually get taken over to Europe After the Europeans came, after Columbus arrived, he brought it back and that's where we get polenta from.

They started growing corn in Europe and finding ways to use it as well.

The 1 thing they did not bring with them is the process of nixtamalizing corn, which is that's going to be the next class, so teaser.

Okay, so there are 2 kinds of corn that are grown in America today.

They're grown anywhere in the world today.

The first 1 is going to be what we call sweet corn.

There are major physiological differences between sweet corn and field corn.

Now you can harvest field corn at the milk stage, it will not taste sweet.

If any of you have gone to Mexico and you've gotten the street corn, the elotes, you know, that they make, that is usually field corn that is harvested at the milk stage, right?

That's why it doesn't have a lot of sweetness to it.

Now, the sweeter varieties of corn are catching on and some of the street vendors are starting to use that, but it's not very common.

If you go to, you know, if you really go out into the caye, if you really go to the street to get the street corn, it's going to be field corn harvested at the milk stage.

Sweet corn, though, as we grow it, it is harvested much younger.

It's harvested at what's called the milk stage.

Now, milk stage, I'm going to switch over to a different screen for a moment.

By the way, I have the Audioverse recording already, so this is really for you guys.

If anybody struggles to hear me, let me know.

But Audioverse is getting their thing without that mic.

This is a printout that I was given by a very knowledgeable and helpful friend.

He's sitting right up here if any of you want to talk to him.

This has all of the various growth stages of corn.

As you can see, it takes you through even the number of leaf stages and all of the different reproductive stages.

There are different stages of the reproductive cycle of corn as far as when it produces the ear and the silk and the tassel and everything right up on through maturity.

And there's a helpful chart down below that talks about all the different stages of the vegetative growth from emergence up to tasseling and clear on through the reproductive stages, okay?

So there is a point of maturity for all corn where it reaches what's called the milk stage.

So you've got silking is going to happen first.

We're going to go through all this in a little bit more detail, but just to give you a preview here.

So when we talk about the milk stage, okay, the milk stage is right at that point when all of us know that we should harvest our sweet corn.

If you know when you should harvest your sweet corn, don't want to assume anything.

If you have grown sweet corn, you're gonna harvest it at the point when the silks have dried out, okay?

You know that if you've got a little bit of green on your silks, you're gonna have really tender corn, but it's not gonna be very flavorful, Right?

So the milk stage is at the point when the kernels have gotten, developed their full color.

And if you were to take your fingernail and pop 1 of the kernels, wear safety glasses because it might squirt in your eye.

And what the fluid that's gonna come out is gonna be a milky color, okay?

You know at that point the corn is actually starting to develop complex carbs, it's taking those, the simple sugars and developing them into complex carbs.

Right at the very beginning of that stage is the point of maturity at which you're gonna harvest sweet corn.

Now, that, by the way, that document is in the handouts page on the website.

So if any of you were getting the emails previous to the conference and you found, and I don't know if I can make it available for Audioverse.

There might be a copyright thing with that though.

Mark Chuljian

Growing Your Own Small Grains and Beans

Okay, so good morning and welcome to everyone.

So before we get started, let's have prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this beautiful day.

We can all be here together and please bless me as I share a few things I've learned and help it to be a blessing to others.

Okay so my name is Mark Choljan and our family, I live on our, I work on our family's farm in Southern Middle, Tennessee Sorry Southern Middle, Tennessee and so We're gonna I'm gonna be sharing a little bit about what I know.

I'm not a professional, but a little bit about what I know about growing beans and grains.

And this is supposed to be geared towards the home garden.

I'm not sure how good I am at that, how good a job I've done at that.

So there are 3 common types of beans that we use here in the United States I think anyway.

1 is dry beans and those are the regular, you know, most of our beans.

We have cow peas which if you're familiar with black eyed peas or pink eyed purple hull peas southern peas those are all cow peas.

They're native to Africa and then soybeans which are native to Eastern Asia.

Okay so dry beans are divided into different market classes which are you know kind of the common Pinto, Navy, that's how they're, they call them market classes, Pinto, Navy, Black, they're all the same species.

So, with the plants, they have different, you have different plant habits.

And you also have upright, short vine, determinate and indeterminate.

So if they're determinate or indeterminate, that's basically whether or not, if a determinate bean, I'm pretty sure it's this way for dry beans I know for sure for for soybeans determinate varieties when reproductive growth begins there's no more vegetative growth Indeterminate vegetative growth will continue after reproductive growth begins.

And bush or vine, it really doesn't matter what you pick, It just depends what you like.

So if you want a bush that's gonna be kind of self-supporting, that's 1 way.

Or you can choose a vine and let it climb on something.

How do you tell the difference between a bean and a pea?

OK, well, maybe you can hold your, they want the questions at the end, so just save your questions for the end.

OK, and they're also the same, green beans are also in the same species.

So, okay, cow peas are, they're the common southern pea.

And, let's see, you also have vining and more bush type of these 2.

So soybeans are photoperiod sensitive so that means that when the photo period reaches a certain length or your day reaches a certain length then they're going to go into reproductive growth.

So You have different maturity groups depending on your latitude.

This shows what maturity group you would grow depending on where you live.

And you can go up or down a maturity group and still get good success.

If you go to a lower group for your region you'll get an earlier harvest.

If you go to a later group then you will get a later harvest.

Peas are less sensitive to non-ideal conditions than the, and soybeans as well, than dry beans.

For fertility, you should, They should all be inoculated with the proper rhizobia For your lime and for phosphate potassium those things just follow your soil recommendation.

And for nitrogen, okay for nitrogen you should, soybeans and cow peas will fix all the nitrogen they need.

For fresh shell beans, you can increase the yields by adding an additional up to 40 pounds per acre or 0.9 pounds per thousand square feet of nitrogen.

Although they will give a fair yield without any additional nitrogen.

Cow peas you should avoid soils that are really rich in nitrogen or they will produce lots of vegetation and very few peas.

Okay so for for planting the timing wait till after danger of frost Plant as soon as your soil is about 65 degrees.

Earlier is generally better, although with dry beans, we've had a problem with Mexican bean beetles, and so the way we've dealt with that is by planting later.

So we've waited until late June or early July, and then the bean beetles, I guess they've come out and died and they don't get your beans near as bad.

With soybeans, you need to put, there's a certain time, you have to plant them long enough before the day lengths begins to shorten so that they can Produce enough vegetation to support a good crop so Where we are it's that date is about June 10, So if you plant before June 10, on June 10, you'll get nearly as much as you would if you plant earlier.

If you go earlier, you'll get a slight yield increase, but if you go later you'll get drastic yield losses.

So we're in Tennessee and that date's gonna vary some depending where you are in the country and also on the maturity group you you choose.

Earlier like a lower maturity group for your area is gonna be more sensitive to being planted late than a later maturity group.

So They should be planted about an inch to inch and a half deep.

You can go a bit deeper if the ground's dry.

Space them about 3 to 4 inches apart in the row and 30 to 36 inches between the rows.

Calpees get pretty big so they'll fill in quite well at that space.

And If the canopy closes, if you can have the canopy close, if you wanna get optimum yields per square foot, you want the canopy to close basically by the time they start blooming.

Oh yeah, something else on planting is when you plant them they should be planted Ideally you would plant them.

Let's see it's plant plant them after a rain rather than before a rain because if it rains or if you water after they're planted, the soil will crust and they will have a hard time germinating or emerging.

Also, it'll help with weeds because they'll get a jump start on the weeds and if it does rain before or you end up it gets really dry and you end up needing to water before they come up make sure you keep the soil moist until they're fully emerged.

We've planted beans before and you go out there in the morning and you can tell they're trying to come up but only a few of them have come through the soil it's a bit crusted and you water them you come back maybe 2 hours later and 95% of them are out.

For weed control you can, well planting helps with that, watering, waiting to water and then cultivate them.

Dry beans are the only ones that we've really had a significant issue with Z's in, mainly white mold.

So and I don't know if there's any varieties that really have good resistance to white mold on them, but some are going to be better than others.

So avoid wet period, minimize your wet periods, so if you need a water, wait till they dry out in the morning And then as soon as they're fully dry, water them.

But ideally water them so that they'll have time to dry out again before the dew falls on them in the evening.

And for pests, Mexican bean beetles have been our biggest problem on dry beans, but planting them late has pretty much completely taken care of that issue.

So we just plant them later, but in plenty of time for them to mature before frost.

Cow peas, we've never had any significant pest problems.

Sometimes they'll get some aphids on them but usually it's not enough to be, they'll just, you know, they'll damage a few pods but that'll be about it.

Cuds bugs is 1 that We have in our area now.

It's generally controlled with this fungus here I don't I don't know if the fungus is approved for organic though.

Deer will get just about, well that's something that, deer eat our beans, so you'll probably have to fence if you have a lot of deer.

So for harvest, for dry bean harvest, there are a couple ways you can harvest them.

1 is to harvest them fresh before they're dry and they're generally referred to as fresh shell beans.

So you pick them when the pod is starting to get a bit lathery and the beans are pretty much almost fully mature.

And then you can hand shell them or you can Shell them in a pea sheller and you can Can or freeze them and they take fresh harvested beans Tastes better than dry beans there.

That's the best way to eat them Okay, and then That's our pea sheller.

I guess the sound is only on here but it's not very informative.

So this is a Taylor pea sheller and they work really well.

You can shell many many bushels of beans.

These are cow peas here, pink eye purple hole to be exact.

But they work great for the pinto beans, black beans, anything like that.

Okay, and if you wanna let them dry, which they're easier to, you know, you don't have to have a freezer or can them that way, you can wait till most of the pods have turned yellow on the plants, Then go pull up the plants, leave them in windrows, allow them to dry completely, and then pick them up and when they're dry, and you can hand thresh them some way.

I don't have a lot of suggestions on hand threshing because we don't hand thresh we use a combine so but of course most of you probably don't have combines so you can probably like put them in a barrel or on a tarp and when they're really dry you could walk on them or beat them with a stick.

I heard about somebody that said they would drive on them but I would avoid that because beans are very fragile and if you damage the beans even if it may not be obvious, then, especially if you're saving it for seed, then when you plant the seeds the next year, you'll end up with something called baldheading, where the plants will come up and they'll make the cotyledons and then they just won't grow anymore.

So you can, when the pods are dry, they'll be brittle and the beans will, when you've, you know, I mean walking on them probably wouldn't damage them.

You could, something like that, that would break the pods out, break the beans, pods up, the beans will fall out and you can throw the plants on your compost pile or back in the field.

John Dysinger

The “Up and Up” on Greenhouse Trellising

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the privilege of being here.

We know each of us has an individual story and a testimony of your leading and guiding, but Lord, while we're here, I just pray for your spirit.

I pray that you would guide and direct in this class, that it would be meaningful and helpful and that I would only say those things that you would want me to say and we thank you for this in Jesus name amen.

So this is called the up and up on greenhouse trellising.

My name is John Dysinger and we have a farm in Middle Tennessee.

Been doing it long enough to know a lot of what doesn't work and a little bit of what does work and so we're just gonna share today and I'm not claiming to be an expert in greenhouse trellising but we have tried a lot of things through the years and I'm just going to share what we are learning.

But I want to first get an idea of the audience that I have.

I get that So that seemed like the majority so that's good I Am this I mean the topic they gave me was on greenhouse trellising, so I'm definitely going to be focused on that.

But some of the methods, and I'll try to point them out, some of the methods don't require a greenhouse.

So some of these things you can do outside and if we have time we can talk about adapting some of them to that.

So a Greenhouse, even a small 1, is not a cheap investment.

You want to get the most you can out of it.

And that is part of the reason for trellising.

Well there's there's actually a lot of reasons and we'll just name a few.

It increases yield by going up you can maximize the space and get more yield out of a small footprint.

Decrease disease by allowing more sunlight and airflow to the plants.

By having them up off the ground you're allowing the air to flow through and the sunlight to get to it And you have less disease pressure than just everything sprawling on the ground.

Okay, increase harvesting efficiency and ease.

It's a lot easier harvesting up here than bending over and searching through the vines on the ground trying to find your cucumbers, right?

And of course, a lot of this is kind of geared towards market gardening where you're trying to be as efficient as possible.

Because you're going up and utilizing the vertical space, you can get more plants in a given space.

Easier balancing of the plant between generative and vegetative growth.

Now that's getting a little bit beyond the scope of this class, but I'll just say this and I'll refer you to a book if you really want to learn about this.

There are a lot of things that if you have a controlled environment and that really means having heat and fans and stuff, but if you have the ability to control the temperature in there, you can actually steer, they call it steering or balancing the plant between vegetative and generative growth.

Generative means fruit bearing and Vegetative of course is referring to the plant itself.

If it's too, I'm sure some of you have experienced this.

You have this super healthy lush plant that's not producing hardly any fruit, right?

And then the other extreme is you have these spindly, anemic plants that are trying to put out a lot of fruit, and that's too generative.

I don't want to go into it any deeper than that.

And there's this book that I'll refer you to can take you as deep as you want to go.

Have you, you know, suckering and trellising?

I mean, when you do it for hours and hours, it might start feeling like it's not quite so fun.

And that's 1 thing I really want to emphasize here.

And when you're busy on the farm, you have to really weigh.

Well, the big 1 that everybody I'm sure thinks of is tomatoes Tomatoes is the number 1 crop that that is trellis.

The other 2 big ones I would say are cucumbers and peppers.

And so we're going to talk about all those.

But then there's you can and there are people who do it, trellis melons, you know, like little Charentais kind of melons that you can trellis up.

And if you've got the market for it, that's a good thing.

Of course, green beans, pole beans have to have some kind of trellis.

That's not usually done in a greenhouse, but it can be if you have the space.

And peas, again, you know, sugar snap peas.

Pardon me for, you know, I'm coming at it from a market gardening point of view so I'm always thinking about, you know, ways to make money kind of thing.

So if that doesn't apply to you, just understand that that's the way I think as a market gardener.

But this is a key point I want to really bring out here.

You have to look at the potential yield increases versus the time involved in trellising and decide whether it is worth the additional effort.

I have a friend who grows or at least he used to grow hundreds of acres of paste tomatoes up in New Jersey, all on the ground.

They literally planted them and left them.

Come harvest time, they have machines that come through, makes you question your paste tomatoes, but comes through and pulls up the plant and takes everything off of it.

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Series

Special Interests

Growing and Using Corn

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Recorded

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Parts

Growing and Using Corn

1h 4m

Growing Your Own Small Grains and Beans

56m

The “Up and Up” on Greenhouse Trellising

1h 1m

Farming Efficiently

54m

Growing Fruit from Eden: Figs for the Home Gardener

1h 3m

Berry Basics for Beginners

1h 24m

Sound Doctrine