When you sit down for dinner and there's a piece of corn on your plate, you never really stop to think of where it's been. If you did, the last thing you'd think is that it was grown next to a bunch of marijuana.
For who knows how long, people have been growing weed in cornfields. Usually these are guerilla-style grows where the grower chooses a field(s) that isn't his own, but that's not to say a farmer has never snuck some cannabis in with his corn either.
For the guerilla grower, cornfields offer a precise environment that most other locations don't. While there are a few setbacks to growing in corn, it's a favorite place of many growers - and for good reason.
Cornfields are large, confusing, creepy, and people simply don't go out into them. If you've ever been into a commercial cornfield near the second half of summer, you'd find yourself stepping into tightly sewn rows that tower over your head. It's very quiet and still inside because the corn acts as an insulator from wind and sound. It's also very easy to get lost. It can seem like the rows go on forever and if you're not careful, you can find yourself in a literal maze. There's very little room to walk and practically zero visibility from row to row. This high level of security makes the corn an exemplary spot for growing and harvesting cannabis.
Sativa cannabis strain from Oaxaca, Mecxio. Flowering in a midwest cornfield, 2013.
However, it's important to know what you're doing. Just because you're growing where nobody can see you doesn't mean you won't get caught by authorities or that your plants won't be stolen.
Below are some tips from years of experience that will help you get the best out of your cornfield grow while minimizing crop loss and maximizing your yield.
Know Your Farmer, Know Your Corn
First off, and most importantly, you need to choose the proper field. If you're unsure whether it's sweet corn, feed corn or silage corn, you'll need to find out. Sweet corn and silage are harvested as early as late august while feed corn (cattle feed) is sometimes not harvested until as late as November, depending on weather. You DO NOT want to plant in a field with sweet corn because your plants will not finish in time. The corn will be cut and your hard work (and your buds) will be gone.
Chances are, someone around you knows when the corn is harvested. Get as much information as you can, but do it without giving away your intentions.
Another important factor of corn growing is being sure your plants don't go into the field until after the farmer has sprayed for weeds and pests. Once the corn is about waist high or a bit taller, they won't be spraying anymore because the sprayers can't get into the field without crushing the corn. You don't want any sort of weed killer or pesticides on your plants. The weed killer will kill them, and the pesticides can make your finished product toxic.
Security First
While cornfields generally offer amazing security, it's important to know the shortcomings.
1.) Large plots can be easily spotted from the air by plane or helicopter. To prevent being spotted, never place more than 2 (to 3 max) cannabis plants in a single location. You'll want to plant inline, directly along with the row. (Planting between rows will make it easier to spot and also minimizes sunlight once the corn reaches a certain height due to how the stalk's leaves sit). Depending on the spacing of the corn, you'll want to pull about 3 to 5 corn stalks from the row to place each plant in. Don't plant another 2 anywhere within a 100 foot radius of any other plot. If you spread them out, you'll be fine. If you put 10 or 15 plants together, you're asking for trouble.
2.) While it's generally simple to enter a cornfield unseen, the low visibility makes it hard to exit safely. Be sure to take your time when exiting the last couple rows, and slowly peek out & to both sides before your exit. Choose your entry and exit wisely, in a place with little to no vehicle or foot traffic.
3.) Don't ever visit your plants when it's raining or has recently rained heavily. The corn is planted in soft soil that doesn't recieve the same sunlight as an open area. After it rains, it will take a bit longer to dry up. Entering the corn when it's too wet will leave footprints, and anyone who stumbles upon them can follow your trail straight to the plants. Even when it's dry, it's best to wear a crappy pair of shoes with duct tape on the bottom. This prevents identifiable prints of any kind from being left behind.
4.) Don't bring your cell phone. Nowadays, it's far too easy to pinpoint someone's location via their smartphone. If you must bring your phone with you, be sure to disable cellular data and then turn on airplane mode. Also be sure your ringer is off or set to vibrate. Should somebody show up and you have to hide, the last thing you want is a phone call or alarm ringing, giving an audible signal of your location.
5.) Dress accordingly. If you're thinking about going to your plot wearing a bright red shirt, a white shirt, or your Lakers hat, think again. You need to be camoflauged, which means you need to match the corn. Buy a green shirt, and wear dark or khaki colored pants. A green hoodie is best because it will protect you from the corn's sharp leaves. The hood can be used to hide your head/hair/face from a low-flying plane or helicopter, or if for some other reason you need to hide while you're in there.
The Cornfield Environment
When it comes to cannabis, cornfields offer a great growing environment. The soil is generally tilled deeply, meaning it's rich and soft. This is perfect for cannabis roots to penetrate deeply and produce heavy yields. The corn will help hold moisture within the field which offers near perfect humidity for cannabis. However, since the tightly knit corn acts as a wall there is less airflow in the corn - mold can become a problem if there are heavy rains and not enough sun. Corn can also grow very tall, sometimes up to 10 feet, causing your plants to recieve less sunlight. It's important to take note of these things and plan/act accordingly. To minimize problems, do the following:
1.) Select a tall-growing strain, and if possible, one with decent mold resistance. Tall growing cannabis will easily compete with the corn and ensure your plants recieve enough sunlight. Sativa and sativa-dominant strains are perfect for growing in the corn.
2.) Plant in a row with good southern sun exposure. You might want to cut the very tops from surrounding stalks to the south once they get above head height. This will allow the sun to enter at an angle when it's lower in the sky, giving your plants better exposure. You want as much sun as possible, which can be a battle in the corn. What you don't want to do is create a gaping hole that sticks out from the air. Chopping the top off the stalks in the row immediately to the south will help. Also, chopping the tops off the stalks in your row (the stalks immediately before and after your plants) will help with early morning and late afternoon sun exposure. Pay attention to the sun and its patterns and you'll know what to do. You'll see the angles and times of day where sun penetration is low and can act accordingly with the cutting.
3.) Cornfield soil is good, but bagged soil is better. Yes, it takes some work and bags of soil are heavy. But a single large bag of soil per 2 plants is fine. Dig your hole, plant, and backfill. Use extra vermiculite in your soil for added water retention if you're not able to water weekly. If you must use the native soil, that's fine. It's great soil. But bagged can make a huge difference in yields through improved oxygen and nutrient delivery.
4.) Bugs are rarely a problem, but there is a pest called a corn-borer in some areas. They will eat holes through your buds. They shouldn't be a problem though, nor should most other bugs. If you feel that you have a problem, go purchase some ladybugs from a pet store. Put 10 or 20 on each plant and they will eat the malevolent bugs. Praying Mantis also work well but they are known to enjoy nibbling on buds from time to time, so it's your call.
Visiting, Watering, and Maintenance
One of the best parts about growing is visiting your plants to care for them and check their progress. You don't want to go too often, but it's still an important part of the growing process. You need to be sure they're watered and keep them in optimal health.
You really don't have to visit your plants too much if you're getting decent rain. If you're not getting rain or suffering a dry spell, you'll want to get out there weekly to water, if possible. At a very minimum, every two weeks. Cannabis likes dry soil better than sopping wet soil, but it's important to keep your plants hydrated or they can die. The best way to do this is with gallon jugs of water, using 1 per plant. The handles make them easy to manuever through the corn and are much lighter than buckets.
When visiting, NEVER leave empty jugs or trash of any kind behind. If you smoke, don't even leave a cigarette butt on the ground. Keep it clean and leave no evidence. NEVER take the same path through the corn, or you will spread the stalks too much and create a trail. Be sure to count your rows so you know EXACTLY how many rows in your plants are. If you have 5 or 6 groups of 2 plants, you might want to buy a cheap handheld GPS unit (DO NOT USE YOUR PHONE'S GPS) to mark them so they can easily be found. Regardless, it can sometimes still be hard to find your plants even with GPS, so be sure to take the proper precautions to determine their location.
Later in the season, as the corn gets taller and your plants begin to flower, it's important to trim eveything up. The lowest branches are going to recieve very little sunlight due to the height of the corn. While they will produce tiny buds, those lower branches use more energy to keep the leaves alive than it's worth. They're actually robbing the plant's energy from the higher branches and leaves because they don't get enought sunlight of their own. To prevent the plant from wasting energy on sparse buds from lower branches, simply remove those branches. Do it cleanly and all at once, but never remove more than 25% of the total plant. By removing them, the plant can focus its energy on building buds at the top where the sun penetration is sufficient for photosynthesis. Whatever you cut off, take it with you and dispose of safely. Don't ever leave it laying there near your plot.
Harvest
During harvest time, the most important thing you need to do is beat the farmer. If you have an idea when they'll be chopping the corn, this can help you immensely. You don't want to pull your plants before they're finished but you don't want to lose everything to the farmer's combine either. Do your best to plan, use multiple plots, and use multiple fields if possible. Keep an eye out for farmers and combines in the weeks leading up to harvest. With a little surveillance and some luck, you should be fine.
9.5 foot Mexican Sativa strain, flowering in a cornfield
Do NOT make the stupid mistake of running out into the field while the corn is being cut, trying to save your plants at the last minute. The farmer cannot see you in the tall corn, and you cannot see the combine. The corn can be disorienting and the combine sound doesn't travel the same as it does outside the field. Don't be a dumbass and get killed & combined over some weed. Use your head - I say this only because there are dumbass people out there.
Some Last Words
Laws are different in different states and/or counties. The same goes for different countries. I have no idea where you're living, and I don't advocate you to break the law. With that said, have some respect. Understand that you're taking down stalks of corn that might not be yours. While it's not a huge deal, there are a lot of farmers who won't like it if they find out. Operate with caution. Don't leave trash, and don't contaminate the field with toxic fertilizers, pesticides or other chemicals.
Unfortunately, due to legislation, many of us are drawn to the corn to grow safely. Unfair and unjust laws regarding cannabis possesion/use are FAR more immoral than yanking 5 ears of corn in a field of 500,000. I'm not here to argue the ethics, but please be smart and be respectful. If you do it right, you'll end up with some great smoke that will last for a long time to come.
I hope this writeup was helpful to some of you. Feel free to ask questions or drop your own tips on cornfield growing in the comments.
Nice work.
i did this just next a piggery .
The crop was gigantic .
Hi @xvickx, great post! There is a ton of useful information here.
Growing in cornfields can work out very well but I'd like to share a couple reasons I choose to avoid them in my area.
My first reason is just about being nice. That corn could be someone's livelihood. Maybe you are taking great care to not damage their crop or maybe you just dont give a fuck and literally remove some of their crop to make room for yours either way you are still going to have a negative impact on someone's hard work.
You can do it in a nice way though and minimize that point to almost nothing.
My biggest issue is getting caught. In my area this is where they catch the outdoor growers because the cops are lazy. The just sit on the road and play with their fun drone toys now. After reviewing all the outdoor marijuana busts in my region that I could find info on I determined the corn fields to be the highest risk.
This year some idiot actually left their car parked in the middle of a country road while they went into a field. The cops followed the trail from his car and he was tending about 70 plants if memory serves me correctly.
Corn fields are prime for growing high quality outdoor marijuana but they can also be high risk. Just watch out and be careful!
There are definitely some things to consider before just doing it, that's for sure. Also, it's definitely not a new method and there's a lot of people I've read/heard about getting caught growing in corn. Most of the time, similar to your example, it's due to carelessness or greed.
I also appreciate your stance on being respectful of other's property; for a lot people that's not even a thought that crosses their mind. I feel that whatever your decision is, it's important to only do what your capable of & comfortable with. If you can justify the farmer losing 10 ears of corn so you can have a years-worth of smoke, I understand. If not, I understand that too. It really depends on the locale and the situation. As a quick mention, there are also (usually) very small bare patches in most larger fields from when the seed-spreaders run out, skip a beat, or temporarily clog for a split-second when they're sowing the seed early in the season. Those bare spots can also be utilized without having to pull a single stalk.
Thanks a lot for your valuable input, and thanks for reading. :)
great tips~~!~!~
Thanks, and thanks for reading. I just wanted to write something basic & comprehensive for anyone who might want to take a shot at cornfield growing.
The problem with this practice(s) is that it yields a terrible product, this is what is usually done in most of Europe (outside of NL) where MJ is illegal, and what they end up with is an uncontrolled field of male and female plants that almost ALWAYS has been pollinated by the male plants. This why mj in Europe not from NL is usually quite awful and often converted to hash as the bud that remains is usually of such poor quality that it doesn't carry a big enough price to warrant the risk.
My apprenticeship as a master gardener was based upon using Cannabis as a companion crop, and I can tell you right now the two are completely incompatible: cannabis' deep root system makes it a poor choice next to a heavy feeder like corn as they will compete for nutrients and eventually stunt both yields, prevent airflow, compete for sunlight while stressing the plant to create more fan leafs than flower, almost all of corn cultivation in the World is heavily sprayed with pesticides and artificialfertilizers etc... Corn is literately the worst crop we cultivate for many reasons, but primarily due to soil erosion and soil depletion due to its very growing cycle, add to that equation that cannabis which will take anything and everything from the soil and you're setting yourself up for failure as you're damaging the soil's ecology.
I can go on if you'd like, but the truth is if you live in an area like that, your best bet is to resort to indoor grows where you have far more controlled settings, and this is from someone who only takes actual pleasure in outdoor grown mj. The problem is that most grows in these areas are not undertaken with care as quality and standards for personal consumption isn't the aim, but rather a quick profit.
PS: My last year in I had to clean the remnants of a large fox and what appeared to be its litter (too many little feet attached to the walls) from a combine by hand after a 3rd cut hay harvest... a human, while larger, wouldn't fair any different in one of those.
Hmmm.. I'm going to have to disagree. I wrote this post as an informative one and not to get to deeply into the details of growing. However, I don't think it's fair to say that all cornfield grows yield a terrible product. In fact, I think you're totally incorrect.
For example, there are a lot of "master growers" who yield terrible products due to chemical use and numerous other factors. Moreover, many of them are even doing this in a totally controlled environment, indoors. Does that mean everyone is doing it wrong? Of course not.
Surely, there are concerns with pesticides and fertilizers present in cornfields, but that's not always the case and just like in any other situation, there's always a solution. Just because some people in Europe don't know how to properly sex their crop doesn't mean that others in Europe (or around the world) aren't doing it properly. My final product is always high-quality sinsemilla because I pull my males and because I don't plant in areas where others grow. So, I find your argument to be totally invalid as far as quality is concerned.
Furthermore, just because corn is a heavy feeder doesn't mean that cannabis is incompatible for growing in the same space. If you run Sativas (especially a tropical sativa), which you should know are lighter feeders as compared to indicas, it's rare to see a deficiency problem and they'll also easily outgrow the corn without even breaking a sweat - it's in their nature. As far as roots are concerned, that's a complete non-issue.
You may have based your apprenticeship on cannabis as a companion crop, but that's not what my article is about. My article is not geared toward long-term soil maintenance of cornfields, nor is it geared toward the mutual benefits of corn and cannabis. I'm not talking about running 500 plants in a 5 acre cornfield. My article is about growing a handful of cannabis plants, for personal use, secretively, in an extremely large cornfield. I'd say 90% of cannabis that's grown and sold is motivated by profit in one fashion or another, so I can't relate to or agree with what you seem to be hinting at - that growing in the corn is damaging eco-systems and putting dangerous, unhealthy, garbage quality cannabis out there for nothing more than a quick buck.... That's simply untrue.
I say everything above with respect, and I respect your opinion and the time you took to write your comment. You raise some rather interesting points, however, it just doesn't seem to be a very relevant or valid argument for the situation I'm presenting here in this particular article.
I've learned some people here can be what I would call marijuana snobs. No matter what method you are using to grow or how frosty and dense your buds are they can grow it better and their buds are always bigger and stinkier.
I prefer to take the opposite approach and celebrate how great it is that this plant is so adaptive and can be grown so many ways.
Keep up the great posts! My hope is steemit becomes a new hub for the massive marijuana subculture.
I can agree to disagree with what you have said, but I really take issue with this statement:
Root rot and root-bound crops are perhaps the most common problem you'll see when competing with surrounding crops, especially corn as it is so densely seeded together. I've even seen it with tomatoes, which also have a deep root system, and incurred some very observable growth variations from moderate to outright severe as it also a heavy feeder.
I was limited to fast growing sativa dominant hybrids and couldn't cultivate any tropical Sat/Ind due to the environment/elevation I was growing in; however, I will accept that I could be wrong in that my sample size/data was not entirely inclusive and didn't take this into account. I wish I could get m hands on some Ruderalis genetics from E. Europe, but nothing came up despite my best attempts.
I still think you're playing Russian roulette in terms of contamination from pesticides and fertilizers growing inside of a cornfield. Cross winds from adjacent fields travel far, I was sprayed on with sulfur from vineyards a 1/2 mile away on windy day and had a wheezing cough, headaches and nausea for 2 weeks.
Pesticides are atomized liquids and can't travel as far as powder/dust, but its still a huge issue and cause for a ton of disputes/lawsuits between organic vs conventional farms.
I'm not a 'snob' by any means, and I like to see other people's methods, if only to contrast them to my own observations and data and enhance my outview; I just think that cannabis is and always played a vital role in agriculture as a soil re-mediator, and was likely first and foremost introduced for crop rotation to enhance soil fertility, and when it is used to further erode soil its akin to seeing someone use a fine piece of hand-made furniture for kindling.
Lining the holes with 80 gallon extra-thick garbage bags and then filling them with growing medium is a simple and very effective method for eliminating any issues with roots. This also allows for enough medium to be used that it can breathe. It also prevents checmicals from entering the cannabis' soil.
Holes poked with a pen near the bottom 2 inches of the bags (maybe 30 holes) allows for drainage. The plastic barrier also reduces water loss to surrounding soil when watering by hand.
I think you got a winner here, @xvickx! Great post!
Much appreciated and thanks for reading!
Nice post and pics. I got a lot out of it. Never tried it in corn before, growing i mean.
Thank you @luzcypher. Glad you enjoyed the read. For some of us it's a perfect solution, you might feel the same if you give it a try!
https://steemit.com/cannabis/@nuoviso/green-rush-wirtschaftswunder-durch-cannabislegalisierung
I was just going to write a similar article but you beat me too it and you likely did a better job than I. I can add one more tip...there is a product called Squishy Baff (best name ever) that is added to children's baths so it makes a jelly like substance. If you add about a teaspoon of this back into the whole when you are planting and spread it as evenly from top to bottom as possible it does an amazing job at retaining water and ensures you will not have to visit the plants to water them all summer.
Not a bad idea at all, I'm assuming it's non-toxic since it's a bath material? I use a pretty interesting mix of 60% soil, 20% coco, 10% sphagnum moss, and 10% perlite so I get good water retention and rarely have watering issues. Another factor is that the field's floor stays damper than exposed soil since the corn prevents the sun from penetrating the ground much once it's at about chest height. I don't transplant until 2 rains after the farmer's last fertilizer spray and by that time the corn is usually 50% taller in height than my plants but they catch up quickly (and eventually surpass the corn.
I love this post. I feel that the high prevalence of civilian drones make corn fields less optimal. From a ripper perspective, this would seem like an easy way to scope out possible outside grows. Not supporting those actions at all obviously. Again very good post.
Thanks for your reply, and thanks for reading.
I don't feel like drones are an issue where I'm located. In some locations, yes. But I never run more than 10 plants and I space them out. I also go deep into the field. Your point is a valid one depending on location and especially depending on quantity.
Thats good! I'm looking forward to seeing what we can get from an outdoor crop. The season started off slow in New England. So hopefully a mild fall will allow our sativas time to go the distance.
And that no rippers find the ladies...