Producers across the country are beginning to get into the fields and getting that corn seed in the ground.
When it comes to planting corn, getting that seedbed prepped is imperative to ensuring a steady start — whether you are growing silage or grain corn.
A key to this is ensuring your soil temperature is conducive to seed germination. Still, as Alana Serhan, marketing development specialist with PRIDE Seeds notes on this Corn School episode, there are other aspects of your soil you need to pay attention to.
A lot of late-season work didn’t get done last fall, so we see a lot of corn trash left out in the field this year,” Serhan says. “When we are working on clearing out that trash and trying to put that corn crop down, some things we need to think about is what that corn trash could possibly do.”
Having a trash whipper on your planter is becoming more and more crucial, especially after some of the silage years that have been faced across the Prairies. By having a whipper, you will ensure that all the debris is cleared, leaving a path for the corn to grow properly.
However, if you do have a whipper, Serhan says to make sure the whipper is just “tickling the surface” to prevent any trenching in your fields.
“If we have them set too deep, or too aggressive, we can start to get a little bit of a trench, which is a perfect place for water and other things to sit, which is what we don’t want,” she emphasizes. “We don’t want that crusting, and we don’t want that compaction.”
Another significant option Serhan suggests when it comes to getting your crop off to the right start, is to get some fertilizer down with your corn seed if you can do so.
“I know in silage it isn’t something that is necessarily brought to the forefront, but anything you can do to help get that corn seedling off and up out of the ground, right away, is going to help,” she explains.
Check out the full Corn School episode with Alana Serhan and RealAgriculture’s Kara Oosterhuis, below:
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