News from Your Federated Agronomists | May 28, 2019

Emerging Crops, Unplanted Fields, Choices to Make The crops that got planted earlier this month are starting to emerge (photo above: corn seedling, and slowly emerging treated soybean seeds), but growing degree units (GDUs) have been hard to come by. “It takes 100 GDUs to get corn out of the ground,” said Kevin Carlson, Federated’s agronomy sales manager, and “the very cool weather explains the very slow emergence.” Using a growing degree calculator, it’s possible to plug in a planting date and see how the GDUs stack up, and get a sense of how the seed should be doing ... Read more.

First Comes Snow, Rain, and Cold. Then Come the Weeds. The crops may get in late, but the weeds won’t wait. Planters will barely be back in the shed before the sprayers will need to be in the fields to start weed (and disease) control. Maximizing the effectiveness of pesticides is vital. Federated recommends many products to improve performance, a few of which are Array®, Plexus®, and Legion® ... Read more.

Critical Nitrogen Choices in a Hurry-to-Plant Spring In this challenging spring, the planting window is tight. “ Getting seed in the ground is the #1 priority, especially with corn,” said Matt Kurtz, Federated’s Rush City ag location manager. And nutrients are the next priority. Applying and protecting N is critical, and when schedules are tight, a split side-dressing application plan that includes Factor® (a urease inhibitor) will protect the N on the soil surface for 10-14 days. Once planting is complete, the remainder of the N can be applied, at the V3 to V5, or 6-inch to knee-high corn ... Read more.

Fertilizer Options for a Challenging Early Season With planting hijacked by adverse weather, nutrients become even more critical, even with the challenge of application timing. At this point, if fertilizer hasn't already been applied, preplant options are essentially gone and side-dressing is the best means to apply urea on corn (see previous article). Urea 46-0-0 has the highest analysis of dry fertilizer for nitrogen (N) ... Read more.

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