What does it mean to side dress corn?

What does it mean to side dress corn?
And what does a side dresser look like?

Thanks.

Pooh Bear (aka Fluff For Brains)

Lay some fertilizer, for corn, nitrogen rich, beside the seed row while planting. Too close, you will burn the roots. It"s usually a fiberglass or (older) steel box mounted to the planter

One way is to add NH3 thats a gas under pressure and knofed in. You can also use liquid which would also be knifed in. Then there are granuals that would be burried with a cult shovel when cultivating for weeds. All depends on soil structure what crop and what is the final result we need. Side dressing is done after crop is up. You can alos add fert with planter either liquid or granular. Side dress us usally done after crop is up.

No- side dressing is done way after the crop has emerged, but before layby. ie...before the crop is too tall to go down the rows with anything but a hi-boy applicator. Side dressing is usually applying nitrogen, usually anhydrous, but could be the dry form, urea.

We side dress with liquid nitrogen. We have saddle tanks on a 4440 and use a 3 pt. cultivator. It has a pto pump and a manifold that goes to lines clamped to the rear shovel of the cultivator. It works best on our ground to do it when the corn is getting close to being to tall to drive through.

Works good

Hey- good to see you post again- what have you been up to lately?

Not a whole lot now that the ice is going out mainly spending time out in the woods working on some deer stands and trails.

I've been milking a couple mornings a week. Starting a new job in May.

How about you?

When corn is about the 9 or 10 leaf stage, you knife in Anhydrous Ammonia (NH3) beside the row. It really gives the corn a kick in the butt.

Use to be NH3 was cheaper than dry fertilizer, and you were putting it on at the time the corn needed it, when the soil was warming up, and the corn was really growing. Plus you were putting it right near the roots.

Had a lot of benefits. Still does, although I haven't kept up with the dollars and cents of fertilizer prices.

You did run over some corn on the end rows, but generally the boost in yield made up for it.

Down side was the cost of application, the applicator pulled hard and sucked the diesel, and the danger involved in messing with Anhydrous.
Not for amateurs!


Gene

(quoted from post at 22:05:31 03/21/11) Hey- good to see you post again- what have you been up to lately?

Click to expand...

Whom are you referring to? I've been hibernating all winter.

Anyway, so side dressing is just putting down fertilizer to the side of a row of corn. I didn't realize fertilizer came in so many forms. I'm not a farmer. I just learn this stuff from reading on the tractor forums.

Thanks.

Pooh Bear

Glad that you want to learn. Side dressing is not putting fertilizer along side of the row of corn...it is applying it after the crop has emerged, weeks later. Bottom line is...side dressing is applying fertilizer, usually nitrogen, well after the crop has emerged. On heavy clay...water retentive soils, it"s ok to apply enough N to carry the crop for the year, at planting time. On sandy ground, it"s better to split N applications, so it is taken up by the crop as needed, rather than leached down, into the subsoil, and lost.

That helps explain a lot. I have just seen it mentioned on here before
and have always wondered just what it meant. Thanks bunches.

Pooh Bear

I'm sure there are regional differences in the wording, but in my part of Minnesota, this is how fertilizer is put on:

Broadcast - spread all across the field.

Banded - put on in bands like behind a knife or coulter - often you can get by with less P and K in bands because the super rich band doesn't get absorbed by the soil so quickly, as the roots branch out they cross this band and pick up the nutrients they need from the rich band. Often this applies to P or K fertilizers.

Starter - this is a band put on with the planter, typically 2 inches to the side and 2 inches below the seed.

Popup - this is a low-salt liquid fertilizer put on in a low rate directly in the seed trench with the seed to pop it up and get it growing quickly.

Side Dress - put on fertilizer after the corn crop has come up, you put a more fertilizer (typically N) off to the side of the rows to dress it up...

In some cases, some soils, you end up using all those!!!

Side dress fert can be NH3 - the gas in big white tanks, you knife into the soil.

Or it can be liquid 28 or 32% N, which can be dribbled onto the ground but better to have a coulter & get it injected into the soil a little.

Or it can be granular put on, but this tends to burn the corn a bit and is better if you work it in the ground or apply _right_ before a rain. I think they have other types of granular that are more stable & don't need to be worked in; but they cost more.....

'Here' it was always NH3, also known as anhydrous amonia knifed in between the rows. But the last 10 years liquid - tho a bit more expensive - has become popular because it takes less hp to apply it.

But in these clay soils, most people apply most of the N in fall, not much sidedressing done any more.

--->Paul

The reply's are correct, here's the picture. Local fertilizer dealer has all equipment set up for 30" rows, I'm on 36" rows. He knew someone who had this applicator and wanted to sell it for $300, so I bought it. It has a 500 gallon tank and 5 knives. Chris

That's a fine looking Oliver but cross dressing? LOL Corn is one of the few crops that is a heavy N user that's why the side dressing. Depending on soil type side dress when the corn is about 4" and again when it is tractor axle high. Apply 4" from the row other wise you are feeding the weeds. Adding anything other than N is not going to give fast results and is a waste of money especially if you don't have a current soil test. Unless you're Big Time stay with ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulfate. The liquid stuff is fine but it is dangerous. The dry kind can even be applied by hand and a hoe. Your local County Extension Agent is a good source of information.

When I was a kid, 50's, cultivators had round containers that would add fertilizer to the corn. Worked somewhat like an old corn planter, except you planted fertilizer next to the corn.

Here is a sidedress applicator for liquid nitrogen.

Poked the wrong button on the previous reply.

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Here is a picture of an old school dry fertilizer side dresser. Puts fertilizer down next to the corn row as you cultivate. John Deere 430 Standard with #4110 Cultivator and #41A Side Dresser.

In my day (1950"s) side dressing was done with a bucket of fertilizer and my right arm/hand. And our tractors all had four legs and instead of using gas they passed it. LOL

In the 50s my Dad had brackets welded to our 2 row Ford 3 point cultivator and used the fertilizer boxes off of our potato planter. He had the guide disc modified to drive the fertilizer boxes and used tubes to drop the fertilizer behind the points closest to the rows. It worked good and he did this for a lot of years. He used our Oliver super 55 diesel to do this job.

Somewhere around here, someone's got a picture of Fawteen, in his side dressin outfit, no wait, that's cross dressin, NEVERMIND!