Corn In The Dirt!

There are two types of corn I'm growing this summer (both seen on this page): Luscious, which is an organic hybrid, and Silver Queen, one of the oldest regular (non-hybrid) varieties. (By the way Natural Gardening is the excellent company from which I ordered all of my seeds for this summer.)

Unfortunately, organic Silver Queen seeds are not available, but at least I'll be growing them organically. I could have picked something else, but frankly I knew when I started this project that I had to try Silver Queen. It has a deserved reputation as being one of the corns that takes most like corn, as opposed to just being sugary sweet.

A couple of nights ago, I pulled out five seeds of each variety, soaked them in water for a few hours, folded them in a wet paper towel, placed the towel on a plate, and enclosed the whole thing in a plastic bag. This process is called pre-sprouting, and it's a huge time saver. A seed basically needs water and heat to germinate. You can stick it in the soil and wait, or you can take the steps above and accelerate the process—shortening it from a period of 12 days or more down to a day or two.

After two days, this was my reward:

Roots and sprouts!

We had torrential rains today—which is actually a good thing, because it soaked all the planter boxes—but now that my seeds were growing, I had to get them into the ground!

Fortunately, the weather broke this evening. I picked the best four of each type of seed and got them into their squares.

One of the SFG maxims is to make a little saucer depression around each plant
so that water and nutrients are naturally guided to its stalk.  

Each saucer then gets a small depression at its center which is filled with a mixture of peat and vermiculite.
This gives the seed a very loose, easy medium to start growing in.  

A little corn seed on its bed of vermiculite and peat. 

Covered with vermiculite and a little soil, and watered.