Sweet corn is a heavy feeder on soil nitrogen (N). A full-season sweet corn variety may uptake about 125 lbs. N per acre in the stover, and about 50 lbs. N is removed by harvest of marketable ears. Thus, before organic growers crop a field to sweet corn, they should build up the capacity of the soil to supply N.
Because there are no cheap and readily available approved N sources for supplying supplemental N during the early growing season, it is important to design an organic farm plan that will minimize the need to apply sidedress N fertilizer for production of organic sweet corn. Crop rotations, legume cover crops, manures and compost are commonly used organic methods and inputs to achieve a goal of soil N sufficiency.
Help the Crop Early On
At the time of planting, a small amount of an organic fertilizer may be placed near the seed row. This strategic placement is intended to get the crop off to an early start when the root system is limited.
Once the corn plants are about six inches tall, it is the beginning of a very rapid vegetative growth phase where the crop has a high daily uptake demand for N. The peak uptake rate for N may exceed 3 lbs. N per acre per day. During this critical period of rapid growth, the soil under organic farming management must have the capacity to supply sufficient N to match the needs of the crop.
One way to access the soil N availability at this critical growth stage is to test the soil for nitrate-N in the surface 12 inches of soil. This...
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