This corn is being sidedressed with liquid swine manure using a dragline hose system.
Sidedressing manure deserves another look On-farm research demonstrates there’s an alternative time to get manure applied to corn. by Melissa Wilson
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n recent years, the window of manure application in the Upper Midwest has been limited by wet or unseasonably cold weather. Additionally, farmers with older-style hog barns have deep pits that fill up faster than they did in the past, so they no longer have a full year of storage and often look for somewhere to apply manure in the summer. Sidedressing into a growing crop
opens up an alternative window of opportunity. Studies of sidedressing swine manure into corn in Ohio have shown promising results, so we wanted to test it in Minnesota.Â
Trials in the field In on-farm experiments near Le Sueur, Minn., we tested several nitrogen sources for sidedressing corn over two different growing seasons in 2018 and 2019. Our
10 | Journal of Nutrient Management | August 2020
F3 10-12 Aug 2020 Sidedressing.indd 1
primary goals were to see if finishing swine manure could be used and if it could be applied with a dragline hose system. Why finishing swine manure? A large proportion of the nitrogen is in the plant-available form right away, similar to commercial fertilizers. Unlike commercial fertilizers, however, which are generally 100% plant-available shortly after application, a small jofnm.com
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