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WC Mn/Dakotas | So to me people are bouncing around without really following a clear or consistent chemistry or biology path. If you have been growing corn a certain way and you realize kernel depth is lacking what do you do? How do you make a change that directly impacts this year?
If you have been doing notill you have a long term system in place. You have likely been bcasting and may be shallow banding, you probably have not been deep banding. You likely believe nutrients are moving down into and through the soil profile fairly freely. Nutrients are either not being tied up or nutrients are so plentiful that applying more to the surface will cause nutrients to become plant available at depth. Or something along those lines, right?
If this is true, how is bcasting in the spring going to give you better or different results than bcast in the fall? It sounds like bcasting in the fall is tieing up nutrients then? Or are they leaching out and away ahead of time? I didn't think either of those were happening in notill?
It's probably not just a simple apply more of one nutrient type of solution. What if it's a nutrient you have not been applying? It's not stratified? Is starting to bcast that nutrient going to impact this year's test/crop?
I could see a no till guy changing to infurrow, side band, or a low disturbance deep band or repeated foliar. Bcast though would be the last thing because you have already been doing that or you haven't been doing that for the last 5 years.
If I was going to test something I would do it in a conv or striptill setting because you can more directly impact this years growth and get answers this year. When you find something that you have proved to work, then you figure out how to get that into a notill system and you likely wait but know it will work eventually.
Yes a very generalized response but it was a very general question or statement. Until you take a single field in a single system and understand it thoroughly, you can't possibly look at a summary publication of half a dozen different peoples work in different places and come to any conclusions imho. To me that is what is responsible for holding alot of growers back. This vague "I tried IT and IT didn't work", it's snake oil, that won't work here, these six studies showed it usually didn't result in yield, etc. I want details and a 3-5 year commitment. I want a dowdy/hula type process with other like minded growers. You build data specifically to your system, not assuming a lab or a university is correct. | |
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increasing kernel size in corn
