Air February 9, 2000

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. A few more thoughts about our corn meeting last week, after these announcements. February 22nd, Estate Planning using Trusts. 1 p.m. At Pottorf Hall in Manhattan. This is what Roger McEowen didn’t get to last year when we had our estate planning workshop. This one will be good, plan to be there! Also mark your calendars now for the Area Crops Update at the Community Center in Leonardville on February 29th starting at 6 p.m. We do need reservations on this one, so call the Extension Office. We’ll have a meal for $5, but you have to be registered.

What did we learn at the corn meeting last week? A lot!!!! Hybrid selection can make a big difference. It seems like regardless of the weather and growing conditions wherever we have our variety yield tests, there’s always about a 40 bushel difference from the top to the bottom. Spend a little bit of time with those variety trial results books and start picking some from the top end! Seeding rates - we are probably all underseeding. The new varieties do not react the same way as the hybrids of 20 years ago. Crank those dryland rates up so you get a stand of 20 to 26,000 plants per acre, irrigated should be from 28,000 on up to 36,000. Narrow rows? Probably won’t pay around here. The other thing is to get that corn planted timely. For a lot of reasons, once we get past about Mother’s Day we start to see a lot of problems show up, such as the southern corn leaf rust of this past year. Biggest disease threat to corn in this area? Stalk rot. Sure, the Southern leaf rust from last year was a big hit, but it was under unusualy situations. Year in and year out stalk rot is our biggest enemy. Keep the plants healthy and free of corn borer and you will see fewer stalk rot problems. Fertilization. How much fertilizer you apply and where you apply are both very critical. As we move toward more and more no or reduced till, we really need to work on getting that fertilizer below the residue meaning below the soil surface. We may be looking at as much as a 20% yield differential between surface applications and knifing it in. I think we are getting a lot more nutrients getting tied up in that residue than we want to admit. This is important for the nitrogen and REAL important for phosphorus. If you want the good yields, you’ve got to manage for them, they won’t just happen!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2000.

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