Here’s a place for corn reports.
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My earliest planting was a mix of saved seeds from last year and a handful of other open-pollinated sweet corn. I may have erred and planted too early. Not because the ground is too cold, but because skunk tillage season hasn’t quite ended, so emerging plants have been dug up. I’ll see what I have in another week or so and replant as needed.
I planted on a 6”x8” grid. I intended to plant rows of 8 of each seed type so that I could keep track of maternal lines. However, I kicked my paper with the nicely laid-out seed and scrambled that plan.
I did interplant between some spinach and celery, which will be finishing up before too much longer.
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Wife got me a bunch of corn for Christmas to try this year. Some of the corn recommends planting something like 4 inches deep 4 weeks before last frost iirc. I know that’s how some native tribes did it traditionally but I’m not that daring, been thinking maybe 2 inches at 2 weeks tho. Has anyone done this?
Not sure about the timing, but I do have success planting deep. Four years ago most of the corn we planted was pulled up as seedlings by crows. The next year I planted flour corn 6" deep and that worked great-- by the time it popped up, crows couldn’t pull it out.
Couple years ago then started planting the sweet corn deep too (Astronomy D), and that worked fine too.
Looking forward to hearing about your results 
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I did test 12 inches. Got maybe 1 plant out of 10 and they were late emerging. 6 inches was the sweet spot, where most emerged. This was with standard sweet corn.
I’m sure the 12 - 18 inch depth would work for corn bred to this process.
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That’s what fascinates me the most, that there is potentially corn bred to be planted in the fall right after harvest. Definitely something i plan on experimenting with
The way our weather is here, it woukd probably try to sprout in December, just before the real cold hits. It would need an environment that stays predictably cold and doesn’t have a very wet winter.
I never heard of planting at such a great depth! In many soils you’d be in the subsoil if you plant deeper than 8 inches. I have been planting at two inches and it seems to be mostly crow resistant but I think they still got a few. I will start experimenting with slightly deeper planting. Is there a benefit to planting deeper than 4 inches?
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Yeah I know of some Hopi farmers that plant about a foot deep, but they’re planting their own ancestral landraces so they’re inherently bred for that specific depth. It helps that the typical soil type there is more sandy in texture when worked.
Yeah, I got stubborn after watching a documentary where the guy said “No other corn in the world can be planted like this” so I set out to prove him wrong. Succeeded, in a sense.
They gauge the depth by the growth of certain plants, between 10 and 18 inches depending on the water levels in their sandy soil. The drier the soil, the deeper they go.
As I said, the sweet spot was about six inches, but most germinated. The deeper you go the longer they will take to emerge, but when they do you’ll have really strong plants and you won’t have to worry so much about temperature fluctuations.
4 inches should be more than sufficient. When growing up, Dad did between 4 and 6 inches (the depth of the spading fork) and it worked well.
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