Corn seed recomendation

I don't know much about sandy soil - I have 5 acres of pure sand, the rest of my farm is a swamp with deep clay soils. So I am not much help.

Have you heard of Anderson Seeds near St. Peter? good local seed producer, good prices, their 4000 series of corn (I bought it back when it was 4000, now it's evolved to 4130 or some such...) is a really good standing top producer for me, I've put it against Mycrogen & Dekalb and they can't beat it on my land.

Pioneer is good corn, but likes to drop ears or lay flat in a wind. With our low lands, we only planted it once. Probably was top yeilder that year, but 1/4 of the ears were laying on the ground. never planted it again. In your sand, might work great.

How far north are you, looking at 105, 100, 95 day, or even less? Those 3 are the one's used around 'here'.

--->Paul

I'm unwilling to be in the field on an open tractor with any spray other than glyphosate so that limits my options.

At your latitude, you probably will be looking at 90 day or shorter summer variety, though you might ask neighbors what grows best there. You can call up seed salesmen from a number of companies and they will ALL have something to fit, even if it doesn't. They have product to sell. Its nice to have some independent plot data, if the fertility and fertilization of that plot and soil type and season match yours. Then you have to take the data with a bucket of salt because there are biases and variations everywhere.

Over on NewAgTalk, the concensus is that if you can keep Pioneer numbers standing, it yields good, but it tends lately to all fall down. Ok for feeding in the field but expensive otherwise. One of my neighbors (central Iowa) went with Dura Gro this year. Quite a bit of his fell down. There are lots of good yielding numbers that don't fall down. One theory though is that at the end of the season the plant sacrifices the lower stalk to finish up the ear and with a big ear that weakens the stalk to make it tumble with the least windy provocation. Which makes it most profitable to pick at high moisture.

Albert Lea Seed House has a selection of seed corn and while they wax poetic about yields their seed costs are generally reasonable.

I tend to think that seed bred and grown nearby may be more suited to my fields, I can't prove or disprove that. The huge seed companies won't agree, but the smaller ones are depending on that for customers.

As for corn in RR beans, I did RR corn last year, and notilled RR beans this year. I did have some corn stalks, but there was no corn in the combine or truck at harvest. Simply because I didn't plant much of the ears that were on the ground by notilling, and when they did come up it was mid June or later and thy were separated so they didn't polinate. I was out in the field last Wednesday, I found some stalks that had nubbin ears in shucks that missed getting cut by the combine. There were cobs in there but not one kernel had been pollinated. Others I've talked to say they've never had enough corn in their beans even with continuous RR crops to be docked at the elevator.

It takes longer to make RR resistant weeds if the RR applications are never short but are full strength so there's a good kill. My fields hadn't had any herbicides until two years ago since 1988, so all my weeds are virgin.

Curry seed has some interesting numbers, as does Ottlie. Curry is more up your way.

Then there are rootworm and borer traits...

Gerald J.