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McLeod County, MN | is the main reason you are struggling this year. Your corn probably never did develop proper roots, and a lot of your N was flushed away. That creates two major problems. One, your corn crop runs out of N, and two, you(we) are polluting the groundwater, and the guys at the state capitol have a hard-on to regulate farmers. MPCA is testing wells all over the southern part of the state to check for nitrates, which they are thinking is causing cancer.
Getting it "black" is a bunch of garbage. When you bury all that residue you need lots of N to breakdown all those stalks. I would rather deal with the residue on top and really on a healthy worm population to deal with the residue. The blacker you keep your soil, the easier it is for it to be decimated by erosion force (wind and rain), and when your topsoil is leaving the field you are going backwards in a hurry. In the short term blacker might be better, but longterm tools like the MB plow can cause lots of damage. I agree with Boone, tile probably most beneficial thing you can do. | |
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Corn on corn
