We are very thankful for timely rains without significant storms. We’ve had atleast 1.5″ of rain in the last 7 days. This has helped get our pre-emergent herbicides activiated. This is also good for dryland corn, as it approaches the critical V6 growth stage where much of its yield is determined.
Ground Equipment
It’s not time to sidedress. We want 1.2 lb of total N per bushel goal. UGA Extension Fertility Specialist Dr. Glen Harris recommends sidedressing at 12″ to 16″ height. If we’re using ground equipment, we’re putting out 50 to 75 lbs of N per at at / before planting on irrigated land and 20 to 50 lbs of N per acre in dryland. We put out the rest of the N at sidedressing.
Fertigation
You put out 40 – 60 lbs of N at or before planting and start ground or injected applications of 30 – 60 lbs of N per acre when corn is 8″ to 12″ tall. Keep this going every other week until the total required N is finished. You’ll need 3 to 5 applications during the growing season.
Sulfur
Corn requires about 20 to 30 lbs of Sulfur and we sometimes see sulfur deficiency. It looks similar to N deficiency except we see an overall yellowing of the corn plants. (N deficiency shows up in the lower part of the plant since it is plant movile.) To be sure of which deficiency, we need to take a plant tissue analysis. I talked about the proper way to do this for corn in this blog post.
Only on sandy soils do we split our S applications. Whatever we don’t put out at planting needs to be put out now. Research has shown that we want to correct our S deficiencies between 21 and 30 days old to not hurt yield.
