Nitrogen is one of the most important inputs for growers so with the new year and preparing for the coming growing season GROWMARK has proclaimed right now N-Month.

GROWMARK Director of Strategic Agronomy Marketing Lance Ruppert says this is a good time of the year for particularly corn farmers to take some time to consider strategic ways to manage nitrogen this year. “The better they can manage their nitrogen, hopefully the end result is maximum utilization by the crop which would get the most yield from the corn,” said Ruppert.

Monitoring plant available nitrogen is important, especially when there has been quite a bit of rainfall as we’ve seen lately in the corn belt. “Nitrogen does move in the soil, it’s water soluble, and it can be leached out of the soil into water sources,” Ruppert said. “So the better we utilize the nutrient with the crop, the lower the amount of loss that can happen.”

That is where the N-Watch Program, which was developed by GROWMARK, can be very helpful to growers especially during the spring thaw period coming up. “It really gives growers a good view of their available nitrogen at different times of the year,” says Ruppert. He encourages growers to talk with their crop specialist to find out more about N-Watch and

Learn more in this interview: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/growmark-lance.mp3″ text=”Interview with Lance Ruppert, GROWMARK Agronomy”]