Corn side dressing discussion

Hoping enough people will chime in for an education for many of us. I currently have been side dressing with urea, ussually having the co-op do it with the rogator, but that add"s up. Also, with some of my fields being lighter soil"s, I am prone to leaching, as happened this year, 40 percent chance of showers so I had them hit the 3 biggest fields with the majority dose of urea. Showers ended up being 8" in a couple hours. Well, you know the story from there. So, what do you prefer and why? Urea, Anhydrous, liquid? How often? Application/incorperation methods? Please share as everyone enjoys seeing how others do thing"s, and alot of times the way we or I may do it, isnt the best, but thats how we always did it.

I strip till my corn and put down 15 gallons of 28% liquid with the strip till bar in the spring.

Then side dress the rest of the N with anhydrous. Gotta have your own NH3 bar ready to roll, some years you don't have time to wait on a rental unit from the co-op.

I feel strongly that corn needs some form of N waiting for it when planted.

Urea top applied is not a very good way to apply nitrogen. Too much rain and it washes away. No rain and it evaporates.

If your soils are not suited to spring application then I would side dress with 28% or anhydrous both tool bar applied. When you put it in the ground there is less chance the nitrogen will get away from where you need/want it.

Here where I am in Tennessee most of us side dress with a narrow track buggy with ammonium nitrate one or two will come in with liquid and drop nozzles

I use a product called ESN, it is a granular like urea but has a coating on it for slow release, spread it on and work it in right before planting, seems to work. Our local supplier doesn't handle Anhydrous any more(to many crack heads stealing it to make drugs) John

I dribbled on 28% one time and had a gully washing rain right afterward. All of the 28 ended up in the low spots. I still side dress but it"s knifed in. It could still leach down but at least it can"t evaporate or wash away. Jim

I used to put down NH3 before planting, in my heavy wet clay it seemed to work very well. I put 100lb granular down with the planter, typically only 9 lbs N in that.

Now been trying to build my poor P and K levels the past 2 years, as long as they are going over with an airflow in spring have them put down urea with it too. Still run 100 lbs granular, with some micros on the planter, think that rich band of fert helps the corn in my soils, my cold springs.

I think I liked the NH3 better than the urea, it seems a slow release, a little more was there at the end, the urea seems to want to go away if we get too much rain. The corn will look nice all summer, but seems to hit a wall of lack of N when it should be filling the kernels....

My neighbor uses his dairy manure and neighbors hog manure for the P and K every other year application, he side dressed liquid N. got burned with it this year, with the rains the corn was quite big and yellow before he got any N on it. Sure he lost a few bu of corn to the yellow corn.

I think by far the best is to put 20-40 or so lbs down before or during planting, and follow up with the rest when the corn is knee high. You can probably cut back a little with the split application, and if corn looks poor or looks really good can adjust your rate to make best use of the proper amount of N. both saves some N, and puts more of it available when needed by the corn.

The negatives is using 2 trips which is time and money, and running over some corn as you sidedress.

I believe some obstructive regulations are coming sooner than later where we all will be starving our corn for N, and will need to learn to spoon feed what ever amount we are allowed to apply.

Its good to learn now. I had a 3 acre field didnt get any urea nor planter starter, had the neighbor run liquid on it when he did his. See how that shows up, good experiment. Mine looked as yellow as the neighbors did on that 3 acres.

Depends a lot if corn on corn, or corn on beans. You get that 30-40 lb boost from bean stubble, N is so very critical with corn on corn. The old cornstalks are burning up your N trying to decompose, starves the new crop of corn terribly even if you think you have enough N in the ground. My neighbor is on his second year of 100% corn on corn, it is a learning experience. I run 2/3 corn, 1/3 beans, so I can rotate things around a little, but still have to play with the corn on corn issues.

Paul

Many, many years of continuous no-till corn experience here. I put 40 gallons/acre of 30% N solution as a lay by application before corn is knee high (three weeks or so after planting). Usually at the time I am doing the lay by , there are showers forecast nearly every day, so there is good chance that nitrogen gets into the soil by rainfall. Even if rain does not come for a week or so the corn really jumps when it does rain, so Nitrogen loss to evaporation must be minimal. I use a homemade 3 point mounted tool bar with rigid drops centered between the rows. Floodjet tips on the drops are carried at 4 inches or less above the soil surface and spray a fan shaped pattern to the rear over the entire area between the rows. Only a couple of inches of the bottom of the corn stalk is hit by the spray of N solution. The first or second small leaves are burned off but the corn is not bothered by it . An added benefit of my application method is that any and all small grass or weeds that get hit by the N solution is burned down and killed. I get compliments on the clean weed free fields. Picture is from 2012.... typical corn for me.

All of my N goes on with manure and preplant or preemerge fertilizer, and preemerge herbicide. I use 'stabilized' product to inhibit leaching and increase uptake after full growth is occuring. Seems to work fairly well in a notill, corn on corn crop. I may go over with a postemerge glyphosate at knee high to catch late germination weeds, but rarely in N solution with drop nozzles. We have very few weeds to contend with this year.

When I was farming, I always applied anhydrous when I cultivated. I still think that was the best in my case. Farming sand, you can't preplant it, and liquid, you have to many gallons, if you are 60 miles away from the fertilizer plant.
I always laugh at fertilizer companies that push 28% nitrogen. All they are doing is adding freight. Unless its going to get real cold, use 32%, it will save you a bunch in freight.

I've used anhydrous, liquid UAN, dry ammonium nitrate and urea on corn. I always come back to anhydrous. I always give up too much corn with the other products. I farm mostly heavy bottom ground and anhydrous always makes more corn for me. I've done tests and weighed the results. The other products simply do not perform for me and they are higher in price as well. I see no reason to use them other than convenience. Convenience almost always costs money on one end or the other. I will use another product on no-till hill corn because of not wanting to disturb the ground. Mike