No-till Corn

[slifnom]

Your Feelings, I am going to no-tll corn into soybean stuble this spring. I felt it was to late for winter wheat when I got the soybeans off.My ground is not all clay, but is lower land. I chose the 87 day variety. This is my first try at no-till corn. What are your opinions? Thanks
 

[Erik Ks farmer]

Depends where you're at as to variety. I'm in Kansas, don't plant anything shorter than a 104 day and most 106 day in the bottoms. As to no till, how do you plan to get nitrogen to the crop? You can broadcast your starter (I put 18-50-30 on mine) but getting a large dose of N to the crop is more tricky in no till. You can't broadcast that much N without working it in. You will need to put on liquid or anhydrous. The final question is what do you have for a planter?
 

[Cooney Minnie]

If winter wheat would have been successful, odds are your land is drained well enough for no-till corn.

No-tilling corn into soybean stubble is a no brainer... there is little or no resdue to worry about, and most modern planters will do it with or without no-till attatchments.

As mentioned above, figure out how you would put N down. We do up to 100 lbs N as urea in the starter fertilizer. You may wish for more than that, depending upon yield goal and soybean N credit.

Urea will de-nitrify if left unincorporated on the surface. This can be solved by spreading just before a rain, or by using Ammonium Sulfate in place of urea.

Good luck.
 

[cydectin]

Bean stubble is fairly easy to no-till into. Do not plant until the soil is right. Right is crumbly and you are not smearing the sidewall of seed trench. I use ammonium nitrate broadcast at 150# actual as it always has worked better for me than urea with the agrotain stabilizer added to it. P and k applied in the fall. Good luck and remember if you have a failure, don't give up and figure what went wrong. I hear so many people say no-till won't work after just 1 try. It does work and can work very well.
 

[ihman73]

Your location, soil type, insect and disease pressure, and personal preference should influence your seed selection. We no-till all our corn here in southwestern IL. We have hilly clay ground we knife Anhydrous Ammonia in the fall if we can (we are on the southern border of the recommended dividing line in IL for fall NH3 application) or in the spring with mini-mole knives. We plant 112-116 day corn here at 32,000 population, we have no till coulters and martin row cleaners on the front of the row units and if it is damp we run martin spading closing wheels (13" on both sides) an it works well for us. I would love to cut our N and sidedress but with our butt-puckering hills and unreliable weather that time of year it just isn't for us. I had to sidedress about half the corn a few years back when we had a wet fall followed by a wet spring and by the time I finished I was wading through corn up to my chest, I still don't know how it went under the tractor without breaking off. Until then I had considered sidedressing the flatter ground but that broke me of that idea.
 

[donjr]

Check your ph now, and lime to need. Fertilize to test in the spring, use a 100-195 day hybrid, and get in as early as the ground will allow, dry and 50 degrees is good. Keep your weeds under control with a good burndown and Bicep or and equivalent season control herbicide. Push for good seed and a 200 bu yield.
 

[Jethro Lilley]

We started no-till in 1972 and never looked back... you can no-till any crop successfully if you do your homework. The Milan Experiment Station of Univ. of Tennessee is a great resource. They will supply any research info that you ask for. Myself, I applied liquid nitrogen as a topdress when the corn was knee-high, using my sprayer with drop-nozzles in the middles and large tips to minimize atomization. My goal was a 4-6 inch band. Worked well.