It is officially fall, and with the fall season comes apple picking, haunted houses, pumpkin patches and corn mazes. Ever wonder what it takes to make a corn maze, how the corn is grown and how the mazes are always so difficult to get out of?

When building a corn maze, the first step is to actually plant the corn. This is not always a simple step because there are many different corn seed hybrids to choose from, and farmers need to choose the seeds that will survive the best: this is called seed selection.

After selecting the seed that will survive and provide the best yield, it is then time to come up with a maze plan. This plan can be simple or complicated, based on what you would like in your maze: Do you want buildings or structures? Do you want a big or small maze? Do you want to base the maze on some sort of theme?

After planning out the maze, it is actually time to plant the corn. A farmer has to till the ground and plant the corn in order to get a corn maze started. One trick to creating a thicker and denser maze is to plant the corn in two directions.

The next step is to wait until the corn is about a foot high, at which time you cut the maze. Cutting the maze is not very difficult as long as one has the correct tools. Some of the tools used in cutting a corn maze are a Global Positioning System (GPS) and a tractor.

The GPS allows the person cutting the maze to figure out exactly where to start and where to go in order to build the corn maze. After the maze has been made and the paths have been cleared away and plowed, then there is another waiting period as the corn grows even taller. During the second waiting period, there does have to be some basic weed upkeep, and sometimes the paths will need to be cleared away and widened.

After the corn has grown to its full height and the paths are done, it is time to include markers and anything else one wants inside the maze.

Then it’s time to show it off to the world and let people wander and have fun!

 

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DAVID BITTER
David Bitter, CEO and founder of CropFax.com, works hard to make it easier for farmers to choose seeds that will do well and increase overall yield by using science and technology. To learn more about CropFax visit http://www.cropfax.com/home.php.