3 Keys to Maximizing Corn Yields: Strategies for Efficient Fertility Management and Planting Techniques
Temple Rhodes shares his insights on maintaining or increasing corn yields while managing costs in a sub- $4 per bushel corn market.
Hey guys, it's Temple Roof from Extreme Ag. So over the past couple months I've been getting a ton of questions about how do we still maintain or even drive yield, but mainly maintain yield in a sub $4 corn and be able to cut cost. So that's, that's a loaded question there. I'm not sure exactly how to answer that, but this is how I look at it from my perspective. So my perspective is one, a lot of it starts with your emergence on the planner. Now, whether you do whatever you need to do to create the best emergence, now whether it's a infra, a product like, um, you know, a, a certain fungicide that creates, you know, some resistance to some diseases that you might have, like pythium and fusarium trying to promote that emergence or whether it's, uh, you know, parallel arms on a planter where you're changing from a bushing style into a bearing style. All of these things help promote emergence. So that's one thing that I've told 'em, like, do whatever you need to do to promote the best emergence that you can. That's one thing that I would trigger. Uh, another thing that I would trigger would be, you know, maybe looking at treating fertility. So every bit of the fertility that I'm utilizing this year is I'm gonna a hundred percent treat it, whether it's a treatment to try to make my phosphorus more efficient or to make my, um, my nitrogen more efficient. Every bit of of fertilizer that I'll use will be a hundred percent treated. Now I'm not talking about treating it and cutting back in my fertility. We're only allowed a certain amount of fertility anyway, so I'm not gonna cut back my fertility. I'm just gonna make sure that every ounce of it as treated so I can be as efficient as I can to still be able to promote that yield. And the third thing that I would tell guys, and I've told a lot of these people is, is being able to spoon feed that crop can create something completely different. So there's a ton of guys out there and myself included that, you know, we put a lot of the fertility up front. You know, I have strip till, so I put a lot of my nitrogen placement up front with anhydrous. I'm not gonna do that this year. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take some of the front loaded stuff out, whether it be phosphorus or whether it be, um, nitrogen, and I'm gonna take it out of what I've learned last year with some a s damaged corn, realizing that I fed that, that plant throughout its season and spoon fed it because the stuff in the beginning, it was all a waste of time. So I am gonna spoon feed my crop. If we put out a hundred percent of our, or a lot of our fertilizer requirements, our needs upfront, when we do that, all that money is spent. Well, we can, by spoon feeding, you can create a situation where you can Spoon feed, not only as the crop requires it, you know, phosphorus is needed mainly in the end of season, not as much in the beginning season, but we need more of it in the, you know, in the reproductive stages. The same type of thing can follow all the way through that entire year. If you look at it like that, not only like that, if you're having a, you know, a bad year in your area, once you blow it out front and you put it all out front, that money's spent and you can't capture that back. So three little things maybe I can help you guys with. That's where I'm going with it this year. So see you soon.
Growers In This Video
See All GrowersTemple Rhodes
Centreville, MD