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| Spraying wheat here 3 times after harvest is not cheap and if it’s a wet summer we could have grown 120 bushel corn or more. We are very close to getting as much herbicide cost into keeping wheat stubble clean as we are doing a corn herbicide program.
Usually when we harvest wheat we ding up some kochia and we spend quite a bit of money trying to kill the dinged up kochia before it sets seed. Kochia is a lot easier to kill in February March in a corn crop than it is in July/August after wheat harvest.
I have a hard time imagining only applying 50# of N on average. If we’re shooting for 60 bushel continuous wheat we would likely need 80# of N depending on carryover.
Continuous wheat is hard to keep the yields up and keep the cheat grass out.
If we could grow good wheat after corn without fallowing then it would fit well in our rotation. But when we have been growing corn for 4-6 years we have to think of it like this. Do we hope for 100 to maybe as much as 160 bushel corn (people within 30 miles of me have grown 200 bushel dryland corn in the last few years here and there) or do you:
1. Drill wheat behind the combine at corn harvest and grow a 15-35 bushel wheat crop next year
2. Drill wheat into the 25 bushel wheat stubble and hope to grow 80 bushel wheat the year after that
Between the first and second wheat crops hope for a break even over two years of work
The other option is to fallow instead of grow wheat right after corn harvest. So then you pay your cash rent for no return and you spray for no return. So you have to make enough wheat on year two to be able to pay for two years of cash rent and two years of herbicide plus fertilizer, equipment, labor, cost of living so on. Darned tough to make that make a profit.
Getting to where most of us would just rather take our chances with corn. | |
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Looking forward.
