All of what I say pertains to "my part of the world" in our shallow clay pan soils and may not apply to corn belt soils. When I say starter we actually were using popup, with about 3-4 gpa of 10-34-0 in furrow on 15" corn.

Starter will affect maturity. Typically corn with starter will be about a week ahead of without. That means if corn is under moisture stress, the timing of a critical rain can sometimes make starter look more beneficial and occasionally it can work the other way.

The lower the soil test the better results we had. About 7-8 bpa, sometimes more sometimes less on low test soils. Medium test and above very little results.

It often makes a visual difference and does some weird things. The corn with starter can outgrow that without up till about head high then the corn without starter can actualy end up taller at harvest. Doesn't always work that way but one year at least our no starter check strips were nearly a foot taller. I could hardly believe it.

We quit using it. We weren't always getting positive results and one more thing on the planter makes one thing more to go wrong at planting time and delay planting. I felt like the potential in delayed planting had the potential to cost us a lot more in yield than the benefit we were gaining. When we had fewer acres and more time it made sense. Even though we were set up pretty well so we could load the fertilizer pretty quickly there was always the extra time it took in the morning to load the tank, the extra time it took if a filter plugged or we sprung a leak, and just the general hassle of the sticky nasty stuff to wash off hands and track around. If it costs an extra hour or two a day in planting time I just decided to give it up. Sure made life simpler and at my age that has a value.

I think the further north you go and the colder the soil temps the better chance of results. If I lived in Minnesota I would probably still be using it.......... no wait a minute, if I lived in Minnesota I would be moving south somewhere.

John