had a difficult conversation with them, I love it brother! I had a difficult conversation with my lil girls pet rabbit the other day as well... lol... keep it up man.
Good morning, Travis. I used to follow you on another channel and one of your shorts came up today and now I am following you here. Good to have you back.
I think if it’s up high enough, so it gets more sun in the cool of the morning, it should help. I have a cloth I can move back and forth to shade only when it needs it for my tomatoes and peppers.
Excellent question. In the giant pumpkin world we use shade cloth. Keeps the leaves from burning up, but we also want a LONG period of growth, we don't want that pumpkin to call itself done and stop growing. The heat units presented here explains that!
Wow I didn’t know now about heat units! Thats good to know considering I planted a 100 day variety of butternut squash in July. Maybe that explains why they’re growing so fast! Because it is some kind of hot here in the Mississippi Delta!
Great video. Here in northern zone 6a, Indiana, I make my last sweet corn planting on July 15 ish to the 20th and have to plant at least an 80 day corn. It is always ready in 65 days before our first frost and is always good corn. So, we have lots of hot dry weather that time of year but sure it's not up there with yours. Most people think they should plant a very early corn variety late but it totally freaks out.
Mix feels as a Penn Stater teaching in Alabama :P Good info in the video. Had some fresh Silver Queen Corn last week in the field. First time and it was amazing!
Hey Trav, this is brilliant! I'm a master gardener, and it's not often I learn something new. You just taught me something new. As I was saying about shade cloth and the giant pumpkins, we use it and know that it works. We probably didn't understand WHY it works. This explains that. I mean, we use it because we want to keep the leaves from burning up, and the soil temp at a nice level, we want to keep the plant from respiring water, but at least for quantifying that, heat units is a way to explain it. We want the pumpkin to have a LONG time to grow, keep growing and not call it done. So shade cloth does that. (But get some bigger pieces of shade cloth for next year!)
I’ve compared pictures from last two years of my garden by Facebook memories to today’s garden week by week, and this year’s garden is behind.. looks to be 3 weeks behind
Did you think about, it's just too hot to bother with doing this. Giving my garden a break. Have more than enough in the freezer. My heat units ran out weeks ago
Fantastic information! It explains so much with regard to bolting in brassicas, die off in squash, second flush okra... I'm going to play with this! Thank you so much, Travis!
Great information. Most experienced gardeners get an intuitive sense of what works when, many times through trial and error and keeping records, and experience of others, even though the sweet spot changes from year to year. Here in Colorado our GDD would be harder to predict because of our highly variable temperatures, and we have frost and dead stops, but I will be looking into it out of interest.
Thanks for the info. I knew of it but my specialty in Hort was an ornamentals grower. But I do grow my own vegetables. Beware of warm nights. Be TERRIFIED of nights warmer than the days. After only 1-2 and my crops shut down…days were 75F but a couple nights got to 80F and everything just stopped growing and small fruit rotted…corn, eggplant, tomatoes…everything stopped. Past 3 yrs now. Sorry if I’ve mentioned this before but I’ll probably mention it again. It terrifies me even now. Rome ga
I wonder if growing corn in bags and moving them to shade during the hottest times of the day would help? Also I grew golden Bantam sweet corn and it was a bit shorter and grew ears to maturity much faster than the 75-80 days listed on the seed packet and my reminder came up the other day that the maturity date had come and I harvested these ears weeks ago! So yeah there’s something to that heat unit calculation for sure. This really cleared up a lot of questions I had! Thank you!
A lot of field corn needs 2,000 -3,800 growing degree days. I've been taught that corn does not grow above 86 degrees, and does not grow below 50 degrees. if you have real hot days above 86* and the nights above 86* your corn will not grow at all for those 24 hours, or if your night, and day is below 50* it will not grow at all. They also figured out that you need so many growing degree days before your corn will tassel, and for it to get to the milk stage. They also figured out how many GGD's certain insects need before they hatch. That way they know went to use pesticides for certain pest. I've been keeping track of GDD's for a few years now, outside, and inside my hoop house. Inside my hoop house the last couple years i have been getting about the same GDD's as Little Rock, Arkansas for the year, and I live in northern Wisconsin. The only problem up here is that we loose a lot of the sun light, so the GDD's don't really matter unless we use grow lights in the winter. Thanks for your videos! I love learning from you. 😊
Thanks Travis that’s the type of information I’m always looking for when investigating better ways of vegetable growing as I’m quite inexperienced at it. I live in Western Australia near Perth the Capital City. We have intensely hot summers, so learning this about the heat unit’s will I’m sure enable me to achieve much better results than i have before especially with the sweet corn. I’ll definitely have to do my own research into our weather conditions here. Thanks very much for your wonderful channel and great advice. 👍🏻
Thanks for another educational video. I thought you mentioned something about heat units in a previous video and I’m glad you shared the results of your study. Appreciate you and your mission, all the best and God bless!
Travis my Covington sweet potatoes are breaking ground….planted late May. Too early in my opinion. Covington is 110-115 days. Been in the ground around 60 days. Haven’t and won’t dig right now but they are already a good size.
Corn maximized at 86F? Explains why my corn stagnated until early July... and then took off once we finally got warmer temps. Thanks for the info. Best wishes from Kate in Olympia, WA - 7/26/2023.
I assume because you’re up north. I’m in the same zone as Travis but live in Texas. Today it was 101 F but felt worse with heat index and humidity. It has been around that temp or higher for several weeks now. Just a thought.
That's an interesting and informative post. I think I'll research more on the topic. Once thing it (possibly) explains is why my corn is not as tall as usual. We've had extraordinarily high temperatures in early summer (in excess of 100F). That's normal for late summer temps in our region but it came much earlier this year.
I have some of that white corn growing now...its only about three foot high..had tassles and some silks...just a small patch to test if i could...its hot as hades. I may not do fall garden..i have some issues to deal with and bummed as hell.
Thanks for the informa 11:04 tion I grew some sweet corn(peaches and cream). It grew fast. 10:53 10:59 Corn was short with small ears. No I understand why. Thanks again! I might try using shade cloth over bed
My late planted sweet corn is puny compared to my Spring planting. Late corn doesn't seem to need as many nutrients as Spring corn. I don't see the ear and stalk size differences in field corn vs sweet corn. Late planted field corn does mature faster but there's little difference in the stalk height or ear size. The field corn I planted in mid June is just beginning to tassel and is about 10-12 ft tall. It'll probably get 14-16 ft at maturity.
Ok.... this may be a stupid question but, how do we know or figure up the total GDD needed for our plants. Is there a way we could calculate and know that sweet corn needs the total of 1350? This peeks my interest, especially since Im looking at a whole lot of empty dirt in my garden right now. Things people claim are 'easy', I'm struggling with. 😪
Shorter stalks implies shorter growth and fruits. Would you be better to plant this corn later in order to take advantage of the cooler fall temps? Or what about adjusting the starting points so you maximize growth for all plantings? You can look up daily temps off the web.
@@LazyDogFarm Sure. Just wondering if you want to contemplate different start dates based on what you know now. It'll still be a best guess based on last year's performance and temps. Maybe you can get 2 corn crops, and something else in. Maybe you need better heat unit management and scheduling of crops. 😉
@@LazyDogFarm that’s my understanding as well. And being legally blind, I wouldn’t see them probably till after they sting me. It was a fluke that I’ve found them because I went outside to pick some tomatoes and the next thing you know, I see something scattering up the Trellus. And I came inside the house. I took a picture and lo and behold my my lawn care/nursery guy says yeah those are scorpions. So I’ve been working on them lol.
Here's the article from Ohio State: agcrops.osu.edu/newsletter/corn-newsletter/2020-21/corn-growth-hot-and-dry-conditions#:~:text=Given%20corn%20growth%20is%20maximized,much%20leading%20to%20shorter%20plants.
Travis I have a question, this year I fertilized my corn when I planted, side dressed it twice and watered every other day and my corn tassled but never made ears. Do you have any idea what could have caused that. I've grown corn there before with no problem. Any ideas would be appreciated
How hot was it while it was pollinating? The sun can be to hot and basically burn the pollen if temps are high like 90's or higher. Sometimes when really hot the silks aren't out at pollination time or are past the right time to get pollinated. Worms or beatles can also eat off the silks at that time too.
@@nickparton8324 I really think it has to be weather related. I've seen it happen in fields of pop corn, sweet corn, and field corn, during high heat and dry conditions. No ears of corn.
One day, you're gonna come out and wonder what the heck tore up your crop here and there, and it'll be the ducks. The two ducks we have can do some damage. The rabbit we have at least he eats what he's chewing on. The ducks just go around sampling everything tearing and chewing, go to the next plant that's exactly the same...tear and chew...and work their way down the line. They keep going until they find something they like.
