Last spring, as we all know, was atypical for early planting. Chris Main actually had March planted cotton perform well in a trial here at Jackson. If the weather will cooperate, early planted in 2013 will be planted the first full week of May. It can be easy to remember last year but over the last decade we have had a lot of cotton planted from mid-May to even the first couple days of June perform well. Of course it is not ideal to plant cotton in late May in Tennessee. Thankfully, we are only now getting to May 1 and still have a couple weeks to get the cotton planted in good order.
Cotton Planting Forecast: Another poor week (4/29 to 5/3) to plant cotton. In fact it looks like a pretty sketchy week to even plant corn. The soil will be too wet first part of week to plant and then rain and cold Thursday and Friday. It will at least be warm the first part of the week with highs in the low 80s. Unfortunately, another cold front will pass through Friday causing temps to fall into the high 30s by Friday night. In addition, there will be a 60% chance of rain when the cold front passes through Thursday to Friday. Let’s hope this will be the end of the cold temperatures for this spring. Compared to last week though at least we are getting some DD60s to work with now. It is supposed to warm up after this cold front passes through next weekend. Hopefully next week will be a big planting week!
North Tenn. (Dyersburg): Predicted DD60 accumulation over the next 5 days: 15 (Poor). Temperatures will range from the low 80s to mid 30s over the next 5 days.
Central Tenn. (Jackson): Predicted DD60 accumulation over the next 5 days: 25 (Marginal). Temperatures will range from low 80s to high 30s over the next 5 days.
South Tennessee (Memphis): Predicted DD60 accumulation over the next 5 days: 25 (Marginal). Temperatures will range from mid 80s to high 30s over the next 5 days.
Middle Tennessee (Fayetteville): Predicted DD60 accumulation over the next 5 days: 23 (Marginal). Temperatures will range from the low 80s to mid 30s over the next 5 days.
| Forecast DD60s after planting | Estimated Planting Conditions |
| <10 | Very Poor |
| 11-15 | Poor |
| 16-25 | Marginal |
| 26-50 | Good |
| >50 | Very Good |
Midsouth Farmers Co-op spread a blend of 60-60-120+15Su+1B pre-plant in early April on my 2013 corn fields. I am in a continuous no-till management scheme. These fields were either cotton, corn, or wheat/soybean in 2012. The corn planted 4/9 & 4/10 is up to a stand & when it is dry enough we will begin side-dressing 32% with a coulter rig. My original plan was to side-dress 35 GPA for another 120 units. However, I wonder how much of the pre-plant nitrogen has been lost. What would be a reasonable assumption figuring 6″+ of rain since the fertilizer was applied?
Richard
I can speculate as well as anyone. The 32% in nitrate nitrogen. The nitrate form of nitrogen can leach out but the main way we loose nitrogen is when it is converted into nitrite gas which will readily volatilize away. It takes warm soil to be converted to the nitritie form which we have not had so most of the nitrogen should still be in the nitrate form. This is a round about way of saying that the mjority of your nitrogen is probably still there. You may want to bump up the rate a little depending upon how much rain we get this Friday (say 20%).
Richard, I believe the nitrogen applied late March or early April has probably leached some depending on source. Ammonium nitrate and urea will convert to the nitrate form certainly by 3 weeks. Urea may be a bit slower to convert to nitrate. Leached nitrate N is not ‘lost’ if the crop can reach it at a later time but it is not necessarily available to young corn with a less developed root system. Some N would be lost to the crop due to denitrifcation if your fields were flooded or heavily saturated for 2 days or more. Not sure this fits your situation. I agree with Larry that increasing your sidedress amount by 20-30 lbs would be a good idea.