Transcription
Good afternoon. Greetings from Maize Valley Farm, Farm Market, Winery, and Craft Brewery, and we’re planting fun today. “We make great wine fun” was one of our tag lines because we started in the corn maze business and the pumpkin patch thing. [00:00:15] My wife’s family’s been farming in and around the parts here since the 1800s. The home farm is about a half a mile that way, as the crow flies. Maybe about a mile, that’s where she and I live, and this is the rest of the place here, where we have the brewery, the winery, [00:00:30] the farm market, the restaurant, the live entertainment, activity area back. We’re making hay there soon, corn maze in the back, pulling that vineyard out. Gonna try some new different grapes there, and this year pumpkin patch right here. We’re gonna try and put some pumpkin down in this black [00:00:45] muck soil we have here along the ditch.
It’s a gamble. Last year, it flooded. That was kind of unusual vineyard over there. But to plant pumpkins, a lot of people ask, “How do you plan pumpkins?” We use a corn planter. I’ve seen a lot of people do it different ways. [00:01:00] This works really, really well for us because it takes one guy. It takes a little bit of adaption of the corn planter, but not much. There is a video. If you go to the Maize Valley, it explains. If you’re a farmer and you’re looking to plant pumpkins about this and you’re wondering how we did it, [00:01:15] we changed the planter plates inside there.
How adapted our corn planter plates to plant pumpkins
Basically you have the plate inside there with the cells that suck up the the seed corn. Well, you gotta make them a little bigger to fit the pumpkin, but about one every fourth or fifth one, we leave open. The rest, we put silicone across, and you squeeze them shut. And then as the plate [00:01:30] comes around and the vacuum pulls it up, it only fills that one, giving you that approximate 60-inch spacing. We put ours about 60 inches apart this way and then 60 inches apart that way. Well, how do you do that? You only use row 1, 3, and 5. That [00:01:45] gives you, on a 30-inch space planter, 60 inches crossways, or I guess I would say horizontal. And then vertical, we did it because, with the plates like that, they’re a little close at every four.
Next time we do it, [00:02:00] I might go at 5. You get them about 60 inches apart going in the row that way. That way, you don’t get an exact grid, but you get approximate the spacing with one guy doing it. I’ve seen other people, where they go and actually sit and drop the seed down through. That’s not any fun in my book. [00:02:15] On the vacuum, we run about six pounds, so there’s a vacuum holding those seeds against there that’s right to brush it off. I’m not running any fertilizers on this particular field. This is high organic matter, extremely [00:02:30] fertile soil. It does really, really well, if we can keep the weeks under control and we can keep it from flooding.
Then you use the row marker right over there. That marks the row, but you don’t do it like you did in the corn maze video, where I lined the hood ornament on. You line your left front tire up each time. [00:02:45] So every time you come around, you put your left front tire on the row marker. That’s why I have the bucket up. It gives me a little bit more visibility there cause I’m doing something a little bit different. But this is how were planting pumpkins at Maize Valley today. [00:03:00] These varieties should come ripe end of September, first part of October, in time for the fall activity area and that kind of stuff.
I’m gonna move over. This is our you-pick patch here. We’ll bring the wagon rides out to this patch out here, [00:03:15] unload people. They can go and pick their own pumpkin with their family or however they would like to do it. And then we just have them pay for it at the tractor, each driver. In the back, I’m gonna go put in some pie pumpkins for Marlboro Madness. That’s that little red thing way up there. That’s our pumpkin [00:03:30] cannon.
We do a lot of different cool stuff in the fall. I plant a special pumpkin for the pumpkin cannon. I don’t want it any larger than 8 inches. I don’t want it any smaller than 6 inches. But we sit in the ridge, and we shoot over there to the Christmas trees. That’s Moore’s Tree farm next door. They’re really cool [00:03:45] about it. It’s about a half a mile we shoot them, as the pumpkin flies. So once again, thank you for stopping by and talking about pumpkins at Maize Valley. It’s never to early to plan your group outing out here. Take care. [00:03:59]