Aha. Everything is simple once it’s explained.
I think that in northwest Iowa where I visit now and then something like 20 to 24 inches is normal. I know that when the corn is fully grown the leaves meet in the center of the rows.
Oh wait, so I’m not quite as stupid as I thought!
That’s a pretty big difference…42’ to 18’. I could have sworn my dad says he does soybeans at 18 inches, but now I’m starting to doubt myself. I’ll call and ask him!
I can’t help with this question.
But thinking about it for about… er… five seconds.
All that one needs to do to get out of the field is to walk in some random direction, trampling over the corn.
Look behind you to ensure you are walking in a straight line.
You’ll come to something eventually.
Yep…In dad we trust. And dad says these are regular fields with a well in the center that pumps water out to the rest. So they’re not planted with any special equipment or any special method. Just the plain old straight, boring rows. They just have a circular irrigation method that makes them look like that.
And I dare anyone to call my farmer dad wrong!
I’ve seen soybeans planted at 15". They could probably grow in even more narrow rows, but you’d have to make the planter boxes (the things that hold the seed) so small farmers would have to constantly stop and refill them.
I came in to relate something along these lines, last fall my 7 year old and myself went into a Farm Corn Maze that looked like it was for Tweens – more challenging than the one for little 'uns but nothing serious. I was very surprised at how lost we were and for how long. Now, I could always have cheated, trampled the corn and within 50 feet walked out - and later I saw two paths that suggested some folks had paniced and done just that.
But really I see where the question comes from and am glad to know all I need is to follow the rows (it was a bit - “scary” isn’t the word - but in a real cornfeild with no one around I would be “a little worried” prior to reading this thread).
Okay, this is not only HIJACK time, but also true confession time. There’s something around here called “Davis Mega Maise” which I desperately want to go visit. I’m (clearly) a transplanted farm girl and use every opportunity to get OUT of the city.
So, get this: We couldn’t find the maze.
You read that right. It’s not that we got lost IN the maze or were too dumb to get out in three hours. We got lost ON OUR WAY to finding the maze last year and I still have never been.
Dang, that’s an embarrassing confession.
You want to talk about people getting dangerously lost? Maybe we should switch the discussion from corn fields to driving in BOSTON.
just how big do these corn fields get? pick a direction and walk
You mean you can take the girl out of the farm but you can’t take the farm out of the girl?
No, it gets even WORSE than that! You can take a completely REACTIVE farm girl, and move her DOWNTOWN to one of the biggest cities in the universe (Chicago in my case), then move her to OTHER cities and you still have to listen to her whine:
" The tomatoes suck here. Is there a farmer’s market? When can we buy a house with a big yard?"
And so on, ad nauseum.
L
If the crops in a circular field are planted in straight rows, and the corners just don’t get water, how does the irrigation equipment go around in a circle, to water the whole field, without trampling the crops.
The ones I’ve seen have a central pivot point with an overhead pipe that runs out to the edge of the field. In between, and on the ends, are supports, in inverted "V"s, that have tires at the bottom. The thing pivots around the center, spraying water from sprayers on the pipe.
Is trampling a circle of plants, under each support/tire just an accepted crop lose?
I don’t have a cite for this, but it was kind of a chilling thought nonetheless. My former boss told me she heard that a large number of kids during the pioneer days died by being lost in the tall grass. They’d wander off and that would be that.
There’s a tall grass prairie restoration about four blocks from my house. I think about this little story every time we go walking up there.
The worst part isn’t getting lost - it’s getting strafed by a cropduster just because you sent a telegram to your mom.
On my drives across this great land of ours it has been my observation that those wheels just trample the crops under them.
For a field with a radius of 2500 ft. and 1 ft wide wheels spaced 50 ft apart the loss is about 2%. This is probably accepted just like the loss at the ends of a field where you turn around when cultivating.
I have no experience with circular fields but that would be my WAG.
How about Sunflowers? I’ve driven past the sunflower fields west of here a several times, and I’m pretty sure they are not planted in rows, more a scatter pattern. Certainly, they are much too close together to till, though they might have been rows to start with. And they get pretty tall when they are ripe. During the day, you could just follow the heads (they point at the sun), but at night you could have some trouble.
Every so often in the Little House on the Prairie books some little kid gets misplaced and there’s a big hullabaloo, partly because there’s tall prairie grass, which you can get lost in, and REALLY tall grass in the slough, which is full of mud and water and all sorts of things.
Sounds like they could use a “Lassie” crossover.
According to Ohio State University they should be planted a foot apart in rows 2 to 2½ ft. apart. They do need to be cultivated for the first four or five weeks after the plants first appear.
So how does one get that pacman design.
Ooops, i should have mentioned I was referencing that sat shot of hartley tx.
Declan