3/10/2020 – Disked the whole garden again this time with the drag. Drove back and forth along the west side to mark 6 rows with the tires. Fertilized, hilled them, and busted the hill to plant in the bottom of the trough. The concept at IFAS is to fertilize the plants, not the soil. Piper and Olivia helped us plant them.
Fertilizer Placed
This year we are not broadcasting the fertilizer to provide better control and to not fertilize the weeds between the vegetables. The fertilizer + zinc sulfate was spread in a 12″ band down the center and the hiller covered it up. Used the advice in the link below to compute the amount of fertilizer to spread to equate to 120 lbs/ac per the Dec. 2019 soil test report.
From Calculating Recommended Fertilizer Rates for Vegetables Grown in Raised Bed, Mulched Cultural Systems at IFAS. Applied that advice as follows:
- 3-4 ft bed spacing = 0.83 to 1.10 lbs per 100 LBF for 120 lbs/ac. For 42″ spacing (Fergies setup) apply 0.95 lbs/100 LBF or 1 pint.
- 15-0-15 with 15% N means 0.95/.15 = 6.33 lbs per 100 ft of 12″-wide row. That formula is from the linked paper.
- 6.33 lbs. would be 6-1/3 pints of 15-0-15.
- In addition – Per soil test report dated Dec 2019 – For sweet corn apply 1 Tbsp zinc sulfate per 100 ft of row.
- So, for our 60 ft row spread 4 pts of 15-0-15 (w/ 2% iron) with 2 tsp of zinc sulfate (2/3ths of a tablespoon in 60 ft is almost 2/3s of a 100 ft row. For 5 such rows, mix 20 pints (2-1/2 gallons) of 15-0-15 plus 10 tsp of zinc sulfate.
- Then spread 4 pints of the fertilizer plus zinc sulfate on each row and hill it.
Planted them with the little red planter using the pea plate with every other cup covered with blue tape. Tried about 6 feet with the corn plate but when dug up we did not find a consistent spacing of seeds. Covered the cups so five holes remained in the pea seed plate evenly spaced around the plate–same as the five holes in the corn plate. Piper, Mary and Olivia watch the drop shute to see that the seeds kept falling–and they did.
3/18/2020 – 1″-2″ high corn shoots are standing proudly.