Timely tips for late 2009 corn and soybean planting

There is nothing more important at this point in time than to focus on planting. The most recent Crop Observation and Recommendation Network (C.O.R.N.) Newsletter has articles on weed control and planting corn and soybeans that will be valuable in knowing what to focus on in late planting and maybe some steps to skip to increase your efficiency as the weather breaks. The highlights are:

Corn-

1. Skip P & K Starter on high soil testing soils above 40 ppm P or with conventional tillage between 20-40 ppm P.
   
2. If No-tilling then use starter when soil test are between 20-40 ppm.
3. Apply 30 pound N banded or broadcast in cool wet soils.
4. Minimize tillage passes.
5. Do not worry about hybrid changes until after May 20 planting long season hybrids first.
6. Seed rates that were higher for early planting can be reduced to normal to account for warmer soils.

Soybeans

1. Soybeans planted later in the season benefit more from narrow rows since vegetative growth will be limited.
2. Make sure seed placement is controlled. In other words keep travel speeds reasonable to assure good seed placement.

Weed Control

1. A later start means larger weeds that maybe beyond what tillage will get so use glyphosate prior to planting as a burndown. More detail can be found in this article from Mark Loux.
2. If you want to eliminate 2,4-D from the burndown for soybeans to meet label restrictions on planting then the most comprehensive burndown in soybeans is likely to occur with a mixture of glyphosate and a chlorimuron-containing product (Canopy, Valor XLT, Synchrony, Envive). Next best would be a mixture of glyphosate with a cloransulam-containing product (Firstrate, Sonic, Gangster, Authority First), which can be more effective on marestail and ragweeds than mixtures of chlorimuron and glyphosate, but may be less effective on most other no-till weeds. A full article can be found here.