Planting corn next Spring

Dave H (MI)

Well-known Member
Wrapping up my plans to put in one small field of corn in the Spring. Been doing hay for about 12 years now and thought I would try something different. I have an assortment of good tractors up to 160 hp. I have an IH Cyclo 800 eight row planter with dry fertilizer, a smallish 20' boom sprayer, and a ten foot disk and cultipacker. Still looking for a plow of some sort to do initial tillage, was thinking of a 5-6 bottom on land moldboard plow but am open to suggestions. Do I have all the bases covered for the Spring planting or did I miss something? Having never done corn on this scale before I would appreciate any and all input. This "test" field is only about ten acres but I have larger available for the future if this goes well. If I am all set for planting I will move toward planning for harvest. Thanks!
 
Need at least roughly 7-16/112 inches or equivalent to achieve inline plow draft with an on-land plow. So 6-20 or 120 inches is good and 6-18 OK, anything smaller not so good.
 
I believe you are on track. Whatever plow you and your tractor would be comfortable with. Way back when, we used to do 40 acres with a two furrow plow and an 8 ft disk. That was way back. Plow, disk and seed. etc. good luck
 
Hit the hay with a good shot of Roundup this fall and no-till into it this spring. May want to add a coulter to the planter, but there is no better row unit for no-till than the IH 800 and newer unit.
AaronSEIA
 
I'm with Aaron. Kill it back with roundup now,, test it and fertilize to test, lime it if necessary. Burn it off with Gramoxone in the spring mixed with Lumax ( or something for long season weed control, add a set of no-till coulters to the planter and plant as early as safe in the spring. Leave them moldyboards setting in the bushes.
 
Around here if you were to plow it and disc it, no round up and no GMO seed. You would get more money for your corn. LOts of people looking for non GMO grains. Does not have to be organic, just non GMO. Of course organic is in high demand also and sells for a lot more money than non GMO.
 
I was looking for a 7-16. Pretty sure I can pull that in my soil with the larger tractor, duals, and the loaded tires and weights. Of course if I can't...(go to plan B)
 
If I break even on the operating costs I will be happy for a first whack at it. I already have the equipment from haying and the hay has paid it off three times over. I own the land and the tenant on the other fields pays for the taxes, insurance and such with his rent. Shouldn't take too much of a bath!
 
Should of mentioned, I am not killing off my hay fields. That would be like eating the goose that layed the golden egg. With all this cool wet weather I have been taking as much as FIVE TIMES the normal bale count for second cutting and, frankly, have been doing better with hay than I ever expected. I took the new corn field over from my tenant. The last three years were wheat, soy, wheat. I have volunteer wheat on the field and a lot of crabgrass, foxtail.
 
We call that "taking all the fun out of it"! I'll look into setting her up for no till BUT, that is going to lead to a lot more questions on my part because I am a plow, disk, and plant kind of guy. Don't know nothin about no till.
 
From what I can see around here, if you don't spray your corn you have a hard time seeing it come August thru all the weeds. What do you do, run a cultivator down the rows and hill it up like we do in the sweet corn patch...only on a larger scale?
 
You put down something like Harness Extra ahead of the planter and come back with a cleanup application depending on what comes up from there. Dad has been no-tilling for better than 25 years and probably hasn't hooked to a cultivator at all in 15. There are a lot of good total control weed programs for corn that work very well. That said, I like recreational tillage as much as anybody.
AaronSEIA
 
Neither did I when I started no-tilling around 1975, and we didn't have the chemicals we have today. But it's a lot less work, fuel and steel to no-til. Less erosion, fewer weeds, and about the same cost. But the time savings is where it really pays off. You can cover a lot more ground more quickly by cutting out those two heavy tillage steps.
 

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