Side dressing corn 101

good afternoon everyone this is Tyler Franklin with axes seed happy Memorial Day hope you all enjoying some time with your families a lot of farmers are out in the fields today I'm out in the cornfield in Northumberland County and I want to talk to you a little bit about fertility and we're at the growth stage right now where a lot of farmers are side dressing corn and I want to talk about the different options out there I get a lot of questions on whether it's better to broadcast or knife or dribble on top of the ground so I want to talk a little bit about the plant basics and and and the pros and cons of each of those practices so you can make a better decision on what you need to do on your farm the looking at this field the corn is at the grouse stage v5 v6 right now it's got a really good color to it the basics of determining what grouse stage it's at is I'm gonna lay this plant down right here when you're counting leaves you don't count a leaf unless it has a collar so this right here is called a collar and then you also have to take into consideration this plan is far enough along the first leaf that came out of ground the roots have pulled it under and it's decayed so this is not the first leaf this is actually the second leaf on the plant so this would be v2 v3 v4 v5 and v6 this leaf doesn't count because it hadn't developed a collar yet so we're right we're at v6 and that's a typical time for people to get in the field side dressing corn at that grouse stage v3 the plant stops living off of the seed if you look in here you can still see the shriveled up seed at v3 there's no energy left in that seed and the plants actually living off of what it pulls from these roots so depending on whether the farmer ran starter if the farmer had a starter band in that root ball it can start picking up that starter as soon as it stops using energy from that seed a lot of farmers are not running starter that run a little bit of pop up the broadcast and fertilize there's so many different management practices out there you need to be aware of what stage of plants in so you know when to fertilize so the plant doesn't go through any stress that at v6 the plant is starting to determine how big the ear is going to be and so any stress that it goes through at this particular point can lead to smaller ear size so this particular farmer ran starter so the plant has some roots that are in the starter band now so it's it's it's pulling a little bit fertilizer that's in this daughter but that will run out of juice in the next couple weeks so side dressing for this bomber should occur in the next ten days but let's look at the root systems on these young plants rule of thumb I always say that the roots the main roots don't go any wider than the leaves so if the leaves are out to here that's kind of where the roots are you'll have smaller roots out in the middle at v3 the roots usually reach the middle of 30 inches but they're small they're not doing a whole lot of work for the plant this particular plant and the roots are coming out to about right here but if you look down in here I've dug a hole about eight inches deep you look down in here the main roots are within six inches of the plant so say this farmer did not have a starter band that the plant was living on right now and I was going through a little bit of stress and he banded nitrogen right down the middle it's going to be another 10 days before this plant actually has significant roots in that 30 inches so it can pick it up what I would suggest in that scenario is to band your side dress close to the plant whether your knife in it or dribbling it I don't want to put in that root Bowl where the plant can pick it up that's one reason these white drops are becoming so popular but they're really expensive and a lot of farmers in this area haven't jumped on them yet the other option would be to broadcast its becoming more and more of a popular option here this this ring I put around these plans represents two and a half square feet the thing about broadcasting is you end up with pellets scattered across that whole two and a half feet you do end up with some right in the root ball that will be available after the first rain but it's very done loop if you could band it right in the root root zone the plant can pick it up quicker but it's a very dilute amount that's going to end up in the root zone so therefore the plant can still go through a little bit of stress picking it up if you have starter I wouldn't worry about it but if the plants stressing right now I want to get the nitrogen and sulfur to that plant as quickly as possible so I want to put it in that root zone so there again if you if you have starter or pop up your plants got a little bit more room for a little bit larger window you're a little bit more food there for the planter survival until the root system gets big enough to pick it up but if you don't have starter I really want to put fertilizer in that root system so the plant can pick it up sooner that's kind of my side dressing 101 if you have any questions you can find us at Tidewater c.com or you can call me Tyler Franklin at 804 4 4 5 4 3 3 3 have a safe and happy Memorial Day

Channel: Tyler Franklin

Views: 28,558

Rating: 4.8200002 out of 5

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Id: X7KtTSqxJL8

Length: 5min 56sec (356 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2017