Coming Events
- Nov. 13 – Landlord/Tenant Workshop, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., Legion Hall, Fairmont, Call 402-759-3712 to register
- Nov. 15 – York County Corn Grower Banquet, 6:30 p.m., Chances R, York
- Nov. 15 – Landlord/Tenant Workshop, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., Fairgrounds, Hastings, Call 308-461-7209 to register
- Nov. 15 – Landlord/Tenant Workshop, 5:30 – 9 p.m., Extension Office/College Park, Grand Island, Call 308-385-5088 to register
- Nov. 26 – Extension Board Meeting, 7:00 p.m., Extension Office, York
York County Corn Grower Banquet Planned
If you’re interested in agriculture and corn production, I hope you have November 15 marked on your calendar; it’s the date of Annual York County Corn Grower Banquet! It will be held at 6:30 p.m. at Chances R. Tickets can be purchased from any of the York County Corn Grower Board of Directors, including President Ron Makovicka, Tom Ritzdorf, Ryan Wiens, Dennis Scamehorn, Dan Stork, Gale Gruber, Dave Dickerson, Dale Moore, Clark Pickrel, Rick Gruber, Boyd Stuhr, Jr., Bryan Mason, and Kim Sheperd.
I also have tickets for sale here at the Extension Office. We’ll have a great meal as well as a great LEAD presentation by Jason Perdue.
Give me a call at 402-362-5508 or email me at gary.zoubek@unl.edu to reserve your tickets!
Cropping Update
We’ve continued to have some great fall weather other than being short moisture-wise! For the month of October in the York area, we received 1.57†compared to our normal of 1.75â€. For the year we are at 15.09†compared to our historic 90+ year average of 27.01†and it doesn’t look like they’re predicting much for the next few days.
The last couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing information about soil testing and fertilizer management and how it’s important to use soil tests, yield goals, and appropriate credits to make appropriate recommendations. We’ve also heard about water quality concerns for nitrate levels in our ground water. I heard more about these topics at the Upper Big Blue NRD hearing last Thursday!
The problem is, unlike this year, if we would never have excessive rains or over irrigation, we would never have to worry about nitrogen in our domestic water supply because it would not move out of our crops’ root zone! But we’ve learned again this year that we cannot control Mother Nature, we will sometimes not receive adequate rain and at other times we’ll receive too much! As a result we’ve had nitrogen move past the root zone and the only way it’s moving is down toward our aquifer.
So efforts to reduce the amount of nitrogen that will reach our groundwater must be a combination of water management as well as nitrogen management. Moving from gravity to center pivot or subsurface drip is a good start, but we really do need to utilize ET or Evapotranspiration information along with crop stages of growth. We’ve learned over the years that the ET rate will vary greatly from year to year and during the season! Many years in our area we’ve overestimated what the crops actual ET has been.
It’s also important to monitor soil moisture, and leave some room for rainfall. If we keep the soil profile completely saturated, when we do receive rainfall it may move the nitrogen with it. I cannot accurately estimate the amount of water that’s left in the soil profile by feel alone. I need tools like capacitance probes or electrical resistance sensors to better calibrate myself. We’re seeing more and more crop consultants and other professionals using these types of tools. We know what happens if we don’t apply adequate moisture, but research at Clay Center also shows that applying too much water also lowers yields, increases energy costs and increases the risk of nitrogen moving through the soil profile.
As I’ve said in the past, the ideal time to make the nitrogen applications is just before the crop is going to use it, but that is not always possible. If possible, spring applications and sidedress or chemigation would be my first choice, my second choice would be spring applied, and finally my third choice would be fall applied when soil temperatures are well below 50°F. As I prepared this column on Monday, the soil temperatures have averaged 46.7 °F for the past week! Check out the latest soil temperatures at: http://cropwatch.unl.edu/web/cropwatch/cropwatchsoiltemperature.
Probably as important, or maybe even more important than when you apply your nitrogen is how much you’re applying! We are continuing to improve yields and with our great soils in this area we are getting by with less and less fertilizer. My question to you is: “Whose fertilizer recommendations are you using?â€Â I challenge you to compare your current program or a proposed program to the UNL recommendations.
What we need to make an accurate recommendation is your yield goal; we suggest taking your last five years yields and adjusting them up by 5 or possibly 10%. As we found out this year, most producers did not change fertility programs greatly, however as a result of the sunshine and high ET’s we had some better than normal yields. We need a soil test that provides residual nitrates in the top 24†depth or more, your 8†organic matter, your previous crop, and if possible your irrigation water test for nitrogen.
Each 1% of organic matter is a reduction of about 30 pounds of nitrogen, each 3 ppm in your soil test nitrate level is a reduction of about 12 pounds nitrogen. At UNL, we credit 45 pounds of nitrogen following soybeans, and I’m guessing we’re conservative with that figure. Finally if your water has 5 ppm nitrate-N and you pump 10 inches, that’s a credit of 11 pounds of nitrogen. You add up all the credits to get your fertilizer recommendations or needs.
It’s not that hard to run the numbers; I’d be glad to or you can do it yourself by going to the CropWatch On-Farm research website: http://cropwatch.unl.edu/web/farmresearch/home. Just go to the section on Additional Pre-Plant Nitrogen Studies and click on the excel spreadsheet. As I mentioned last week, we’re looking for cooperators that would be interesting to compare their program to the UNL recommendations.
When designing a nitrogen comparison, you need to remember nitrogen is a mobile nutrient and corn roots will spread laterally. Therefore, the width of the treatments must take this into account and compensate for it. If you have a 16 row nitrogen applicator and an 8 row corn head, you will need 32 rows of each nitrogen rate. Each 32 row strip must be repeated 4 times. At harvest, in each 32 row block, you must record and weigh the center 16 rows with two separate weights i.e. 8+8 . This is done for statistical analysis purposes. Without statistics, you cannot determine if differences between treatments is the result of the nitrogen rate or because of soil variability.
Give me a call at 402-362-5508 or email me at gary.zoubek@unl.edu if you’d be willing to conduct one of these trials or if you’d like me to run off some recommendations for you!
Landlord/Tenant Workshop in Fairmont! Â Â
Brandy VanDeWalle wanted me to remind you of the Landlord/Tenant Workshop planned for Tuesday November 13, at the Fremont Legion from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. with registration at 10:30 a.m. No cost to attend for the meal and handouts, but RSVP by November 6 to the office at 402-759-3712 or via email at brandy.vandewalle@unl.edu. It should be a great meeting!
Horticulture Update
I’ve received a few calls asking if it’s important to water trees and shrubs this fall since we have not received much precipitation. The answer is yes.  Even with freezing air temperatures, root and rhizome growth can continue until soil temperatures drop below 40°F and they are averaging around 47°F for the past week! This fall root growth aids drought recovery but only if adequate soil oxygen and moisture is available. So, continue to provide moisture in the absence of rainfall without over watering so soil oxygen levels are lowered due to saturated soils. If you wanted to plant some shrubs or deciduous trees you can still do that until the soil freezes.
For the latest horticultural information and tips including dormant seeding of turf, check out our horticulture web pages at:Â http://byf.unl.edu/web/byf/hortupdate.
