Corn Compost
Corn, no matter how sweet, has a bit of a bad rap among farmers of my ilk. It's a heavy feeder, meaning it requires lots of fertility, and for the vast amount of space it takes up in the field it's a ridiculously low yielder (one ear per stalk and there's only one stalk per foot, which means it's barely paying the bills - if at all). We grow it anyway because what would a summer be without homegrown corn? (Yes, it's true, many a bad business decision is made at Valley Flora because of our stomachs).
But in the past few years since we've ramped up our on-farm compost production, corn has earned my new respect as a compost superstar. We mainly grow an organic variety called Allure, chosen after many years of trials for it's big bi-color ears full of deep, super-sweet, tender kernels that go "pop!" when you bite into them. Also, the plants reach towering heights of 8 feet or more, which makes the corn patch more fun to get lost in but also makes for huge amounts of green biomass.
According to John Jeavons, father of the modern bio-intensive gardening movement and auther of "How to Grow More Vegetables (than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine)," one bed of corn will make enough compost for two beds. That's good math. I hadn't heard that bit of trivia when we started composting our corn stalks, but it it was helpful affirmation that the labor investment to harvest the stalks and build the compost piles was worth it. It goes like this: once we've harvested all the ears from a planting and the stalks are still green, we pull the drip tape from the beds and log the corn stalks - either with a sharp machete or the weedeater with a blade attachment (and maybe eventually with the horsedrawn sickle bar mower). The stalks get hauled out of the field with the flatbed and trailer and then layered in a pile with cow manure we source from a dairy in Coquille. The hollow structure of the corn stalks and they way they criss-cross in the pile makes for great aeration and our compost pile temps usually rocket up to 140 degrees within the first week! Every pile gets turned with the tractor multiple times until the rains set in, at which point we tarp the piles for winter and let them finish.
It takes a few hours and some sweat to turn a corn planting into a compost pile but in addition to creating compost it solves a biomass problem in the field. A towering patch of corn stalks, even if mowed down and tilled under, takes a long time to decompose in the field. In the past that meant it was tricky to get our corn ground cover cropped in the fall - too much undigested biomass in the soil would inhibit the germination of the fall cover crops that we plant to protect our soil through the winter. Removing the stalks and turning them into compost leaves us a clean field that we can successfuly plant our cover crops into and gives us a beautiful pile of black compost to spread the next spring. Plus, the work-out means there's no need for a gym membership. Win-win-win :)
|