OK, back to Central Illinois Herman Warsaw from Central Illinois raised and educated Ronald Reagan.
Herman's farm is less than 20 minutes from here.
BTW- it was Glowplug who brought up PIK in this conversation about Herman, PIK was hatched 3 years into the RR presidency with Repub control of the US Senate and Repup gains in the US House of Reps- soooooooooo I thought I should just post a bit of history. 1983 was the year that Repubs chose to reduce surpluses with PIK along with large setasides and ended up being the year that mother nature also chose to reduce surpluses.
Yup, but higher organic matter acts to retain moisture as me, playing Captain Obvious, says.
I wonder if Herman helped or hurt by cultivating corn? Often it can add a couple bu. to yield. But it does dry the soil out so you go backwards if it doesn't rain later in season. My disk-chisel sat in the weeds for long enough, I had a small boxelder growing through it when I pulled it out last fall. I ripped all the clay ground I rent after Thanksgiving. Theory is that the subsoil will be recharged by snowmelt. But no way I'd till the sandy soils. IMO, it's best to leave the earthworms and soil microbes undisturbed there.
If I was choosing a place to plant an NCGA plot I would-
+ choose some flat, deep, soil with excellent subsurface drainage
+ I would build the fertility well beyond current suggestions with manure and cobs which increases soil tilth, soil organic matter, soil nutrient exchange sites, time release nutrients, and soil plant available water
+ I would till very deep to incorporate the manure, cobs, and residue to increase the above and increase soil oxygen content.
+ I would manage the water table after planting by controlling the tile outlet.
Not too hard to do on a small tract. Hard or impossible to duplicate on a whole farm basis.
+ Plant early using highly treated seed, with Votivo, zinc coatings.
+Sabrex in the planter boxes.
+ Select a hybrid variety with genetics featuring upright leaves, one that puts on grain yield (even at the expense of stalk stability which is what Herman did), harvest at high moisture levels, deep rooted genetics (I'll avoid the snark, jab), planted at higher than normal population and probably 20" rows.
+ Sidedress, sidedress, sidedress.
+ Use a Headline or similar product.
+ Get a couple bottles of firewater, do the Indian rain dance. Refuse to answer any jinx calls from ECI or db51.
I had a small field once that would make Herman's yield look normal. Previous farmer was not known for using fertilizer and I had a 1 year lease and knew that farm would be sold to some one besides me. It just was one of those places where God put everything in place to grow corn. All I had in it was a couple hundred lbs N, some 10-34-0, and 45,000 corn plants. Some times it is just having the right place.
Something to think about. They've been trying to duplicate or beat Herman's record yield on his acres. Last I've heard, they haven't been able to. You'd think they'd found a way by now. The ol' boy knew it land.
========Remember that Warsaw's and Child's record yields were accomplished with conventional corn varieties. I get a kick out of the little girl whine that "there are no good conventional varieties anymore" and/or "the eeeevul corn companies conspire to keep good conventionals from us po' farmers, oh woe is us." Granted, the following resulted from a very long rotation out of corn. Granted, the glyphos tolerant corns were deprived of their no crop injury advantage since conventional herbicide was used. But, but, but, you little girl whine whimps, just lost your arguments:
GM hybrids aren't the only "elite" germplasm. G2 Genetics' 3-H-399 AgrisureRW hybrid, with a full complement of GM (genetically modified) traits, captured headlines with a record 309.5 bu./acre yield in the North Dakota University (NDSU) irrigated corn trials. However, the runner up may suggest an even bigger story.
With U.S. growers choosing to plant 88% of all corn acres to genetically engineered hybrids in 2012, one might think the day of conventional hybrids is over. Don't tell that to Walter Albus, research agronomist at Oakes Irrigation Research Site, Oakes, N.D. He reports that DS1803, a conventional hybrid from Dairyland, took second place in the irrigated yield trials with 286 bu./acre. Adding to the feat was the minimal inputs it received.
"None of the hybrids in the plots received any seed treatments, in-furrow or over-the-top applications of crop protectants," reports Albus. "The only seed treatment on any seed was what came in the bag. All plots were replicated four times with their yields averaged for the results."
Due to several conventional hybrids’ inclusion in the trial, none of the plots received postemerge glyphosate applications. Weed control on all plots was a burndown treatment of glyphosate. A pre-emerge treatment was a pint each of Lumax and Harness with enough additional atrazine to total 0.6 lb. of total atrazine.
Fertilizer applications were not unusual either. All the plots received 26 lbs. of nitrogen (N) in late March and another 53 lbs. during strip tillage in late April. All plots were sidedressed with 155 lbs. of N in early June for a total of 234 lbs. of N/acre, a level Albus has found adequate in the past.
"Longtime research at Oakes on N rates for continuous irrigated corn in research plots and fields has shown yields maximize between 180 and 240 lbs./acre N," he says.
The seedbed may have contributed to the high yields under low inputs, especially having been corn-free for at least seven years, reducing potential incidence of disease and insects to stress the conventional corn in 2012. "This year's trial was especially interesting," says Albus. "In the past, we’ve generally planted on soybean or potato ground for highest yields. This year we planted in last year's irrigated wheat stubble. The straw had been left, and the stubble mowed short. We strip-tilled it in the spring. In a seedbed comparison, wheat stubble plantings of two hybrids out-yielded soybean- and potato-ground seedbed yields."
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