Tell me more - spacing, soil amendments, soil test results, watering routine, etc?

July 4th is the absolute latest planting date for sweet corn here (Va) and even then the resulting ears are about 1/2 the size of May planted corn. Soil, fert, water, sun exposure, all make little difference as it is the waning daylite hours like Farmerdill says.

Vegetables generally need 6 + hours of light per day. Maybe you could grow lettuce in the shade.

Agree w/ lgteacher -- the crops you tried in the shaded area are sun loving. Lettuce, parsley, oregano, spinach, mesclun mix, arugula, would all fare better with less sun.

After July begins, sweet corn sown then rends to have shorter and skinnier stalks with smaller ears. This year was an exception. My last planting was on July 6rh and it had the most vigorous crop of the season...most had two ears which isn't the norm here.

The soil is about a ph of 4. Lime is sorta expensive so I normally add it sparingly. Soil composition is a mixture of quartz sand & clay. I only water until I get about 6 inch seedlings.

I space plants about 1 foot apart and have 5 rows that are 20 feet long .

I till in compost, and normally till twice before planting.

sweet corn needs a 6.5 ph. "lime is sorta expensive" a crop failure is also expensive. corn is a big user of N. did the corn get enough? I have planted 65- 70 day sweet corn as late as july 10 and had good success. Many years the corn planted on July 4th would be ate on labor day.

I was considering burning the ground in spring as an adjunct to added lime. Has anyone had a good experience with that increasing the PH ? I do add fish meal to help with the N. I make my own. I stay away from blood meal because of all the media scare about it.

The other cheap fix I was considering was growing potatoes there one year. Will that help increase the PH for the following year to grow sweet corn there?

I don't believe growing potatoes will increase the PH any but they do well in acidic soils in the mid 5 range.

Actually corn will do ok in the 5.5 to 6 pH range. It is not a picky crop for pH. Its nutrient demands are very high tho especially nitrogen. Ground lime stone is very cheap, less than 2 bucks for a fifty lb bag. Need to add it in the fall tho for it to have effect next year. Also a bit of semantics, I don't know when corn was planted, but mid-summer equals August which is quite late for corn to amount to much even the extra earlies.

I am in Appalachia and 50 bag of lime cost $6 plus state tax. Fifty pound bag of lime doesn't go far. I could order a truck load but I am not on a farm and it would be incredible labor intensive for me just to get it to the garden.

Is baking soda an option ? Its more expensive than lime but perhaps if less is needed the numbers might work out?

My neighbors who are successful farmers planted their sweet corn a week (for home use ) before me.

A fifty lb l bag ( most of them are 40 lb) will do a fifty x 100 ft garden. It has gone up since the last I bought. Lowes , Home Depot, Walmart and local feed and seeds sell it here seems to avarage around 5 bucks now. Cheaper but more difficult to apply than pelletized. Dolometic is preferable to calcitic limstone as it also adds Magnesium. Baking soda is not a viable option, both for the high cost low effectiveness. Wood ashes is an option