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Design Recommendations (Rules of thumb to keep in mind):

The smaller the feld, the less complex the design can be because you have fewer rows of corn in which to create your pattern. You can plant corn with row spacings from 20 to 36 inches depending on the fexibility of the planter used. Use a row seeder rather than a broadcast applicator. It’s easier to cut out your design from straight rows. A John Deere Hoe Drill gives about 14 inches between rows, planting one way and seems to work quite well. Another option is to use a true corn planter. Rows with 30 inch spacing are common with populations of around 28,000 plants/ acre. Most farms plant their maze going both ways which increases the plant population to 40,000 or so, making the maze denser. It also gives you row ends on all four sides of your feld, which can make cutting the maze out much easier if you are not using GPS.

Silage corn can grow quite tall, but it has lower lignin content for better digestion by livestock. This makes the corn stalks less sturdy in the feld than grain stalks. As such, grain corn is likely the better choice for a maze, but both types are used.

Check what varieties grow best in your area, but look for varieties that have good height, stalk strength, and a high stay-green rating. There is a website listed near the end of this document to help with corn varieties in the different areas of Alberta.

Make sure there are not too many dead ends. These can be a hazard if people need to get out quickly. Children are also more likely to damage the maze if they get frustrated by a lot of dead ends.

Design the maze so people have options (shortcuts) so they can

choose how long they take to walk the maze.

Consider designing a “mini maze” near the large maze for school tours and families with smaller children.

Children are more likely to create shortcuts through the maze if there are less than six to seven rows of corn between different paths.

Draw your design on an Excel spreadsheet with a grid as the background. Transfer your design onto a hand held GPS, so the GPS can show you where to cut the path.

Some people mark the path with feldstrip before taking out the corn plants, to make sure they are following the design.

Count on hand hoeing or rototilling and herbiciding the path two or three times. Some people apply a residual herbicide that can usually give them full season control. See what works for you, keeping in mind that you will likely be rotating this corn feld into some other crop next year and need to be concerned about herbicide residues being left in the soil. You can grow Roundup Ready corn, and then you can treat the paths with Roundup. But that can also create problems if the feld last year grew Roundup Ready Canola, because you could have volunteer plants and the Roundup won’t work. You will also need to apply a residual herbicide before planting the feld to prevent general weed growth throughout the feld.

You want the corn to stay green as late as possible in your season; so, if you are a 2,600 heat unit area, look for a variety that is rated approximately 300 heat units higher.

Cut the path when the corn is just nicely emerged, one to two inches high. You can use a rototiller, or hoe, but you couldn’t mow the paths at this stage because the growing point would not be mowed off. You can mow if the plants are fve to six inches high, enough that mowing would take the growing point out. But remember, the later you leave it the bigger the job becomes.

For a typical path, if you planted 30 inch rows, you only need to take out one row of corn. That leaves a path that is 5 feet wide (30” x 2 = 60”), which is suffcient for the typical path. If you planted 14 inch rows, then you would need to take out three rows, leaving you a 56 inch walkway.

Often the design will include a tower or bridge at one point within the maze. It allows people to orient themselves and see where they are. They can also get a sense of where they have to go by looking at the maze map when standing on the high structure.

Remember safety when designing the maze. Although it is unlikely that a standing feld of corn will burn, there is the chance that someone will have a health issue, or get lost and want to get out quickly. Plan to have exit paths marked with signs that show the way out of the maze on all four sides of the feld.

There is a maze that installed posts with yellow gates (piece of 1” x 6” fastened to posts using a spring hinge). Once you found one of these, you could exit the feld by going through this yellow gate and in the next path you came to, there would be another gate near by. Just by following those yellow gates the person would fnd their way out of the feld.