By Darren Hefty

Any time you plant the same crop year after year in the same field, you have to be very cautious about the potential for crop disease issues.  If you saw some disease showing up already this year, right now is the time to put safeguards in place for next year’s crop.

Diseases like Goss’s Wilt, Gray Leaf Spot, various stalk rots, and others were prevalent this year in areas across the country.  Corn rootworm resistance to a single trait corn rootworm gene showed up as well.  Here’s a simple game plan you can use to ensure your continuous corn acres are a success in 2012.

  1. Fall tillage – There are many advantages to no-till systems and you certainly don’t have to switch to conventional tillage to raise continuous corn. However, tillage can help you bury crop residues that can harbor diseases that could devastate next year’s crop.  Also, tillage is helpful for managing residues to allow for optimum planting conditions.
  2. Fertility – This doesn’t have to start in the fall, but getting the proper amount of plant nutrients in the field is critical.  Just like in human health, it we eat properly our tolerance or even resistance to disease is much stronger.  Using micronutrients, potassium, and all the nutrients your plants require is a must.  Also, adding about 50 pounds more nitrogen than normal “first-year” corn is essential to help prevent nitrogen tie-up by soil bacteria working to breakdown cornstalks.
  3. Rotating hybrid families – If a hybrid had a problem this year on your farm like a susceptibility to Goss’s Wilt, choose an unrelated hybrid for next year that can handle that disease.  Also, the disease tolerance package of any hybrid should become one of your top considerations when picking a continuous corn hybrid.
  4. Use SmartStax corn or plan on a planting time insecticide – I equate corn rootworms to pick-pockets.  You know they are out there, so will you choose to protect your pocketbook or not.  If rootworms strike your field, by the time you realize it, you’ve already lost your wallet.  There is proven resistance to single trait rootworm corn hybrids across the Upper Midwest.  Corn rootworms can easily take 40 bushels per acres and make harvesting corn one-way a reality for you.
  5. Don’t trust the seed brochure’s ratings – I’m not taking a shot at seed companies here.  The fact is, we have our own seed brand, as well, and I am the guy that puts together the seed brochure and all the disease ratings for our soybean line.  I can tell you this from experience, the seed companies can only rate corn hybrids based on if they were in the presence of that disease before.  If not, it’s a guess based on the family that variety or hybrid comes from.  For example, the Gray Leaf Spot ratings on early day corns have not been entirely accurate because the researchers haven’t seen Gray Leaf Spot in the northern areas where these hybrids are tested.

Brian and I raise some continuous corn every year, and we don’t expect to ever take a yield penalty for doing so.  Follow the tips listed above and watch Ag PhD for more information on continuous corn in the coming months.