Now is a good time to check land for nitrates

This is a good year to test corn land for nitrates considering the weather risk most nitrogen was put through during the last six weeks. If your corn is waste high or shorter, and you are wondering if there is enough nitrogen to make a crop, give me a call (727-3435, ext. 351 or 718-1914) to have a deep soil nitrate sample pulled from your land.

The idea behind deep soil nitrate testing is that we look for the presence of nitrate nitrogen in sufficient amounts to make your corn crop — usually 20 to 25 parts per million. This information takes the guesswork out of applying additional nitrogen. The heavy rainfall during the spring is likely to have reduced available nitrogen for corn.

Only about half of our corn is managed using split-applied nitrogen. At planting, many corn growers will put down the full amount of nitrogen needed to grow the crop. This usually is one pound per bushel of yield. The benefit of putting down all of your nitrogen at planting is you do not have to go back and apply nitrogen later during the growing season, during most years.

The primary draw back though is the corn plant does not need all of this nitrogen at once. From knee high on, it begins to increase its use of nitrogen and continues to use more and more nitrogen through pollination and until grain fill. Split applications of nitrogen help put your nitrogen investment to work when the plant needs it most and avoid early season weather exposure. Using starter amounts of nitrogen (30 to 50 pound) followed up by a soil nitrate test to determine the final application, makes good business sense and good agronomic sense.

Farmers who take advantage of soil nitrate testing find that they have useful information available just in time to help them make nitrogen decisions, eliminating the need to guess about field conditions, that this year have been dramatically changed by weather. If your fields test 20 to 25 parts per million nitrate, this is usually enough to finish growing your corn crop.  We often find nitrogen present when legume crops are grown the preceding year, when manure is applied or following a dry year in clay soils when the corn crop does not use all of the nitrogen applied. Carryover of nitrogen has found in clay soils on local farms growing a corn crop during drought.

Plan to attend the forage twilight program coming up Aug. 13 from 6 to 8pm. Our host, Lakota Ranch is located at 9272 Big Horn Rd., Remington in Culpeper County.