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Northeast, Nebraska | It all depends on your soil tests honestly. Lots of guys running starters are usually using them to eliminate an extra pass through the field or using the planter because it is easier to set up systems to place nutrients right beside the row. Which is very good to do if your tests show you need those nutrients. From what I am seeing is it is mainly for getting more nitrogen out earlier. In furrow systems are great for getting biology onto the seed and also, if you are doing ortho phosphate starter, that seed will have nutrients available as soon as is shoots a root. In my own personal trials, I don't usually see a difference in yield because of starter, but I have seen differences with the biologicals. So this year I did a trial with a mycorrhizal product, which I have used for a few years, that gained me a 10 bu yield return. Now that isn't going to happen in every field, but this particular field had shown areas that were low in Mycorrhizal fungi in the soil tests i did last fall. From what I have seen in my own fields, is that we have more of a biology issue or ph issues than we do nutrient issues. Adding in the needed biological will help free up that tied up nutrient that isn't showing up on your soil tests. Not all biologicals are a one size fits all, which is why biologicals can have a bad rep. You need to find what you need and get it in there and now that biological testing is affordable and pretty easy to get done, we as farmers can fix those bad spots in fields a lot more easily. The key is, don't have the guy that is selling you the fertilizer, do your soil sampling | |
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Thinking about less/no starter trials in corn this spring.
