Think weeding has to happen if you grow corn? There are some simple steps you can take to plant corn weed free and easily in a low maintenance bed that seriously won’t need hardly any weeding all season long – really. It’s time to get rid of that hoe!
I’ve heard from so many people about the back-breaking weeding they’ve either had to do growing up, or in their own gardens that I’ve made it my goal on AOC to show that you can grow vegetables without a lot of weeding (you can see more on easy care gardening here, including my key no-till gardening method).
In our ranch-turned-cottage I grew corn, beans, and potatoes in large-ish permanent beds that measured about 10′ x 20′ with just 4-inch sides. They were basically large raised beds or small garden plots, however you want to look at them. Even though they were too big to not be walked on (one of the goals with raised beds so you don’t compact the soil), I created them with the purpose of growing larger crops that take up more room, like corn, beans, and squashes but with permanent edges to be able to use no-till and weed-free methods.
To me, it was like the best of both worlds and they really did end up working that way. Everything I grew in these four beds produced a ton and flourished. And I didn’t have to deal with hoeing, tilling, or hardly any weeds.
You can see these beds in many of the gardening articles you’ll find on the site (like why to grow cucumbers on a trellis, organic vegetable gardening 101, and why I love Emerite pole beans to name just a few), but I felt there was a need for an dedicated tutorial specifically on how to plant corn to be weed-free all season because that seems to be the crop I hear about the most in regards to weeds.
There aren’t many things worse for a gardener than trying to find sprouting corn in a sea of weeds – and then trying to free the poor things from them, right?
Do you think I’m stretching the truth when I say that you CAN plant corn weed free from the beginning all the way to harvest? Well I’ve got the pictures to prove it! I planned this article over a full season – taking pictures of all the steps from prepping and planting all the way to growing and harvesting, so I could share it with you.
Here are the simple, non-back-breaking steps I take every year to plant corn weed free all season long. It’s my hope that this will revolutionize your garden as much as it has mine! Update: I’ve added an FAQ at the end answering questions I’ve gotten about this including how to start from scratch.
How To Plant Corn Weed Free
Prepping the Beds
While I am promising little to no weeds in the growing season, the weeds do come back each winter in these beds so that by March, the beds look like the photo above.
Do not be discouraged! You can take care of this easily without hoeing, tilling or hand-pulling (oh, and this prep method isn’t just for corn, this is how you proceed for any no-till beds, too).
The first step to prepping your beds is:
- Cover the future corn bed with black plastic at least two months before corn planting time for your area, securing it with rocks. Don’t think about it again – just let the sun and plastic do it’s work of killing weeds and breaking down leftover debris from the previous year. TIP: This video shows more about how we came to appreciate black plastic as an organic way to kill weeds.
- When you lift the plastic months later, you will find a pile of dead vegetation that you simply rake up and add to your compost pile.
- Then spread a 1-3 inch layer of compost over the bed, without tilling. The only time I turn the soil are if I find areas with vole or mole holes – it’s my sad attempt to hinder their movement, ha!
That’s it for prepping – really! Now you’re ready to plant.
Planting The Corn Seeds
- Make a furrow with a hoe, shovel, or trowel about 4-5 inches deep – this is the only place you break up the soil, and it’s pretty simple with the hoe (also the only time you’ll use a hoe – sometimes I just use the end of a rake or shovel).
- Add a line of organic fertilizer in the furrow and partially fill the furrow back to about 1-inch deep. In my 10′ wide beds, I plant 4 rows about 2 1/2 feet apart (note: corn should always be planted in groups for pollination, so never any single rows here and there).
- Add corn seeds 2-3 inches apart. Seeding fairly thickly like this is my trick to ensure an even corn patch – between corn’s often spotty germination and the birds, I had some pretty empty rows before I started sowing this way. You do have some waste when it’s time to thin, but it’s worth it to me to have the corn beds full of plants growing at the same rate.
Set Up The Watering System
- Lay soaker hoses along each planted row, hook up the hose and water the seeds well, usually for 3-4 hours if there’s no rain in your forecast.
- This is a KEY to the weed-free system: watering with soaker hoses – or some type of drip system – is the only way to not water between rows AND give a deep watering to the roots. Typical overhead sprinkler watering gets everything wet, including the weeds that want to grow, too.
- Optional: If you have birds or cats in the neighborhood, covering the beds with chicken wire or whatever you have will help keep the beds pest-free. I also used garden row covers to fully cover the beds until the corn was a few inches high to keep anything from digging.
Sprouting & Thinning
Soon you will see the corn sprout!
- Sometimes it may take up to two weeks, so don’t worry. You can see above that even with my thicker sowing, there are some large spaces between some of the corn. This is fine, as I planned for it, but if I had sown the seed at the final spacing I wanted, I’d have too much space and would’ve had to re-sow. But that means the next step is what some people find the to be the hardest…
- Thin the corn to 12-18 inches apart. Yes, you will be pulling sometimes lovely corn and throwing it away. If you’ve read here long, you know this pains me, but it’s the only way to get full sized stalks with full ears – the only way, trust me. And it’s a lot better than empty spaces. So bite the bullet and just do it.
Maintaining The Beds
Now all that’s left is to water and watch the corn grow:
- Water with the soaker hoses for about 4 to 5 hours every 4-7 days deeply to encourage deep root growth (shorter watering every few days results in shallow roots and stalks that will topple when full of ears if a wind comes up). If in doubt, dig an inch down – if it’s moist, the corn has enough water and can wait for a day or more to be watered.
- You may see a weed here or there that you’ll need to pull occasionally, usually as you’re hooking up the soaker hose (in the photo above there’s one in the front). At the end of the season the bottom leaves may yellow like mine did after two months of warm, dry weather, but the rest of the stalks are a healthy green with ears growing full, so don’t worry if you see some dead bottom leaves on your plants.
Harvest
The photo above is the full grown corn bed at the end of the season with many of the ears ready for harvesting. Do you see that soil? Yeah – no weeds. And that was with no hoeing and no tilling. Lots of corn on the cob with very little work – what’s not to love about that?
Planting Corn Weed Free FAQ
What varieties of corn do you grow?
I always plant two of these beds with three different varieties that all mature 2 weeks apart so that we don’t have a glut of corn all at once. This gives us about a month of harvest so I can easily prep and freeze smaller amounts and not kill myself processing corn. If you have a smaller planting area, I’d just plant two of these, the earliest and the latest.
After trying a lot of different varieties, I’ve settled on this combo as the best:
- 2 rows of ‘Quickie’ as the earliest variety (about 65 days)
- 2 rows of ‘Bodacious’ for mid-season (75 days)
- 4 rows of ‘Incredible’ as the tallest, and latest (85 days)
We have never grown corn so we will need to start a new bed – do we till and then cover with plastic?
No, you don’t even need to till in the beginning – promise! When we started the beds pictured, I simply laid cardboard over the pasture grass and layered it with free horse manure and then a layer of clean garden compost we bought. The total height was about 4 inches. I left that to settle for a couple weeks until it was warm enough for corn and then I planted the corn just like I outlined here and with soakers on the rows. And honestly, it was an experiment – I didn’t think the corn would do as well since the available soil was only 4 inches – I thought maybe they’d fall over when grown or be stunted.
But they didn’t!! Corn is a shallow rooted plant, so that wasn’t and issue, and over the growing season the cardboard broke down enough that the roots grew deep enough to hold the stalks up. And being heavy feeders, the stalks loved all that manure. We had a great harvest even in the first year and every year after that I use the plastic like I outlined – and have never had lots of weeds to deal with!
If you have empty spots in the rows, could you transplant some of the little seedlings that you thin out into the empty spaces?
Yes I’ve done that many times, you just have to be careful to do it on overcast days. If it’s sunny at all, the transplanted seedlings will just wilt and never really take off.
After the harvest, do you pull up the dead plants? If so, does this deplete quite a bit of soil in the beds?
I actually don’t pull up the plants until they’re completely dead in late winter, usually when I’m ready to cover the beds with plastic. I do always let them turn completely brown and knock them down, though, sometime in late fall. After covering and then raking there’s barely any soil, left on the roots.
What if I still want to use a tiller?
If you just can’t get on the no-til train, I would suggest at least using newspaper or cardboard and straw in between the rows so at least you don’t have to spend time weeding the paths. Though I really do hope you’ll read this for even more info on why it’s the best for less maintenance.
So, there you have it – there really is a way to grow corn and not have to spend a lot of time weeding! Do you grow corn? Do you have any tips and techniques to share with us that you like?
This article has been updated – it was originally published in June of 2013.
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Osie Broussard says
I learned a lot here. I’m just starring at my beds trying to figure out what to do. I have 2 beds that measure
6×40. I covered with paper last year so I’m ready to plant. It looks good. Can I plant 3 rows? My husband always said 4 rows for corn. He passed away and now I’m confused. Gardening is a lot of work but I enjoy it. I was going to plant through the black paper. I’m glad I found you.
Jami says
Glad you found me, too, Osie – and sorry about your husband. You can plant corn in two rows on up to however much room you have. For 6 feet wide, I’d suggest 3 rows. I used 4 in the beds pictured here and they were 9 feet wide. So glad you used paper last year- now you will have less work for yourself!
Shirley says
Great! Every year my hubby wants me to stick some corn in the garden. I’ve tried the 3 sisters method and the grouping method to not have but a few corn actually come through. WHY? Because hubby won’t let me thin them! Also thinking I water too much or not enough so NOW I think you’ve given me a win situation 😁 🌽. I live in NE Texas so I will be trying this out! Thank you ❤️
Jami says
I hope with this you’ll both be loving the corn this year. 🙂
Juls Owings says
As a farmer we always plant corn 4 inches apart with 30 inch wide rows(have to get through them to pick them) Never have thinned them. We have transplanted some that got knocked down but not broke. I just put a row cover over them until they took back off . Don’t have time to wait for cloudy days.
What brand of black plastic do you use? The one we used still have weeds growing under it even 3 months later.
Jami says
I just have such spotty germination that I plant thicker and then thin – who knows why, but I don’t take chances anymore.
I’m not sure if there is a brand we use, we just buy 6ml plastic at the home center. That is so odd – I’ve never had weeds grow under it (as you can see from the photos), well, unless we were trying to kill wild blackberries – nothing really works on them, lol. I wonder if you’ve not had much sun? The solar action really kills them.
Shirley says
Even so…black plastic or a tarp is good for getting the initial weeds out but I think the newspaper or cardboard was the trick that helped me 🤔keep weeds out. *(.02)
Jami says
I say, use whatever works!!
Heidi says
Thanks for your great info and pictures about no-till. I love gardening but hate weeding and halfway thru the summer I give up. I am going to try no-till this year!
Jami says
Great – I think you will LOVE it, Heidi!
Hayley says
We are anticipating growing corn for the first time this season. My son, who works on a farm here locally, is convinced it will be impossible to keep the weeds at bay without an herbicide. I am truly hoping to learn that it can be done otherwise. Your post is quite encouraging! Here’s my dilemma: since we have never grown corn, we will need to start a new bed. I would guess this would require tilling. …and then I’m going to be stuck with a weed problem for sure. My question is, how might you propose starting a new bed? If I wait until the soil can be first tilled, and THEN cover with the plastic, I don’t think I will have 2 months to properly kill off all of the current weeds. I would greatly appreciate any ideas you would be willing to share!
Jami says
I think you will love this Hayley – it really does work! When we started the beds, we laid cardboard over the grass and layered that with horse manure (free) and then a clean garden compost we bought. The height was about 4 inches. We left that to settle for a couple weeks until it was warm enough for corn and then I went ahead and planted (just like I outlined here, with soakers on the rows). I have to admit, I didn’t think the corn would do as well since the available soil was only 4 inches – I thought maybe they’d fall over when grown.
But they didn’t!! Corn is a shallow rooted plant, so that wasn’t and issue, and over the growing season the cardboard broke down enough that the roots grew deep enough to hold the stalks up. And being heavy feeders, the stalks loved all that manure.
And that’s all we did. Every year after that I use the plastic and then just layer the compost on the cleaned bed and plant. And no weeds! (I also grow everything this way – no tilling ever for me!)
Karen May says
If you find several empty spots, could you transplant some of the little seedlings that you thin out into the empty spaces?
Jami says
Yes, Karen, I’ve done that many times – you just have to be careful to do it on overcast days. If it’s sunny at all, they just wilt on me and never really take off. 🙁
Teresa says
I was wondering, after the corn harvest, do you pull up the dead plants? If so, does this deplete quite a bit of soil in the beds? I live in Keizer. My mom always planted part of a fish with each seed and only on the full moon!
Jami says
I’ve heard the fish idea before, Teresa, but never have fish to do that with! I actually don’t pull up the plants until they’re completely dead in late winter – ’cause I’m a lazy gardener and no one really sees the garden. 🙂 I do always let them turn completely brown and just knock them down, though, so by the time I put them on the debris pile, there’s barely any soil.
Elie says
I see you’ve joined the no till crowd. I’m not there yet, maybe someday.
Oh and my mother-in-law gave me a aerogarden for Christmas. I have wanted 1 so much since you posted about yours a few yrs back. There is nothing like easy fresh herbs in the middle of winter.
Yael from Home Garden Diggers says
I wish I had room for corn. But your method is good for whatever you plant.
Yael from Home Garden Diggers.
Kitchener Jon says
Great info, Jami! I’m going to file this away for the day when I have room for corn! I’m thinking I’ll try some of those techniques for other plants as well, ie, the black plastic idea, thank you 🙂
-Jon
daisy says
Now that is valuable information! Thanks, Jami!
Michelle @ Simplify, Live, Love says
My corn disappeared this year. I think field mice ate it? I’m not sure. I have 2 lonely little corn stalks left after having 2 entire gorgeous rows just a couple weeks ago. Interesting that you post about weeding – I actually talked about that in my post too. I’m going to have to follow some of your suggestions for less weeding or it’s going to take over my life! 🙂 I don’t mind a little, but it just gets to be too much after a while. 🙂
Shelley says
Thanks you for hosting! Your corn is beautiful. We were thinking we need to make another bed for corn, but it may be too late for this year 🙂
Vickie says
Oh, so that’s how you do it! I am growing corn this year and I have been watering every other day. The corn is tall and lovely with little corn cobs starting to grow, but some of the tops are toppling over! I see where you say to deep water only about every 5-7 days. I will have to do that next year. Thanks for the tips about weedless growing and deep watering! I added a post in the hop party about our white and red carrots and potatoes grown in the compost heap. Thanks for hosting!
Little Sis says
Thanks so much for hosting! I’ve never tried corn, but my kids sure would like me to! Thanks for this!
Lauren says
We planted corn for the first time this year. We have small garden space, so I just have 8 plants. I am wondering if I need to somehow assist with pollination and/or something about de-tasseling? I have heard farm kids talk about de-tasseling, but I don’t know if that goes for sweet corn or not.
Jami says
If you have your corn planted in a clump vs. a row, you’ll be okay with wind pollination. If they are in a row, you’ll want to go and shake the stalks on a less windy day after they have tasseled out to make sure they are able to pollinate the cobs forming on the stalks. I’m not familiar with de-tasseling – I think it might be the smaller cobs on the bottom that won’t grow – get rid of them so they don’t take energy from the plant? Obviously, I don’t worry about it. 😉
angi says
We haven’t grown corn in a couple of years. But I’m hoping it will make the list next year. I’ll have to try to do it weed free. Thanks for sharing.