Topdress

It's time to topdress wheat. This will interest the farmers and the send the non farmers away. It is hard to write across a wide audience.

I bring it up because I have lots invested in cereal grains that need food real soon.

Grass loves N and lawns will need it as soon as my wheat does. Some people take real pride in their yards and I do too, I just don't need a lot of fertilizer in my good lawn soil to make myself mow all summer.

The number of emerged and surviving tillers indicate how much nitrogen farmers need to apply. I have no idea how many tillers I have under that snow but the little I have dug seems to be 5-7 tillers per seed.

This means I need more nitrogen on the crop now. The fewer tillers you have now means the crop needs more nitrogen to make bigger heads for the less heads per plant. The more you have, the less nitrogen you need now.

I had hoped to apply ammonium sulfate and urea as my form of nitrogen by now but it was too early I thought in January. Maybe I should have sold it all and fertilized it all right then, the years are different now.

Nothing has been applied around here that I know of. I talk to suppliers and they haven't moved anything yet.

Not sure what I am going to do now, maybe a plan by Monday. Our sales agronomists are busy and one is expecting their first child. I want the wheat to look even better than my May 2008 wheat picture.

The weather looks good next week but it will get what we call greasy on top like Kelly's pictures in the link. I think he did real well to get his winter crops rolling.

Ed