He Plants Sweet Corn “Check Row” Style

He Plants Sweet Corn “Check Row” Style PLANTERS Market gardener Daryl Horn wanted the labor-saving advantages of “check row” planting for his sweet corn crop but he didn’t use a special planter or wires All he used were two 300-ft long tape measures     His wife recently sent photos of him standing in a 1-acre “check row” field that he planted to sweet corn last spring using a pouch and an Easy Plant “stand and plant” planter to plant a few seeds at a time into hills     Check-rowing was a method of planting where each hill of 2 3 or 4 seeds was exactly the same distance from adjoining hills A field of check-row-planted corn had the appearance of a checkerboard with a hill of corn stalks at the exact intersection of each line That made it possible to cultivate the rows in 2 directions and made it much easier to keep fields weed-free     However check-row planting was a highly labor-intensive technique   With the advent of chemical weed control check-rowed corn fell out of favor and is rarely seen today     “I’m trying to break into market gardening and liked the idea of check-row planting because it lets me cultivate in both directions with my walk-behind BCS rototiller ” says the Husum Wash resident “I had been using a 1-row Earthway pull-type planter to plant sweet corn in narrow rows It planted super fast and worked great The problem was that I had to remove all the weeds in the field by hand which took too much time The rototiller was too wide to fit between the rows so I used a wheel hoe and after that I hand picked weeds within the rows I could barely keep up and spent most of my summer weeding     “With check row-style planting I can use my walk-behind rototiller in both directions to control weeds which works 10 times faster than weeding by hand The only drawback is that setting up the field and planting this way takes a lot of time and labor ”     He used the two 300-ft tape measures to lay out the field in 36-in rows The field has fence lines bordering the north and west sides He stretched one tape measure to its full length alongside the fence line and pulled it tight He then marked the fence line every 3 ft Then he went to the other end of the field where there wasn’t a fence stretched out the second tape measure and inserted stakes with small orange flags on them into the ground every 3 ft     He then used the Easy Plant “stand and plant” planter to plant the row walking alongside the tape measure laying on the ground and planting a handful of seed into a hill every 3 ft After he finished planting one row he unclipped the tape measure from the fence line and moved it over 3 ft then clipped it back on and planted the next row “Every time I moved the tape over I clipped it to the marks I had already made on the fence ” says Horn     “The BCS rototiller is 36 in wide so I removed 2 tines to provide 3 in of clearance on either side of the machine I made 2 passes with the cultivator in both directions until the corn got too tall to cultivate ”     Horn planted different sections of the field 2 weeks apart which resulted in a continual harvest for selling at farmers markets “The field had previously been in pasture and needed nitrogen so I used an irrigation sprinkler to make several foliar applications during the growing season ” he notes     Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Daryl and Sally Horn P O Box 159 40 Fordyce Rd Husum Wash 98623 ph 509 281-0624; fordycefarm@gorge net

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