00:00 A previous recording with Chad Henderson and Mark Cooch. We talked about roots. You know, I was the one that admitted it. I go to these field days, 00:07 they always talk about root digs, root balls. I'm like, alright guys, I'm not the expert around here. Tell me what I'm looking at. 00:12 And they explained healthy root system and everything about nutrient uptake down here at the base of the corn plant. 00:18 Now we're going up stock and we're talking about things that maybe you see, but you need a little uh, refresher on. Mark S is gonna tell us, 00:24 I'm looking at this corn stalk and you say, okay Damien, it starts with the roots, but then this happens up here. 00:29 So kind of you and Chad take me through here. What am I looking at? What thing are you seeing that maybe I'm not. Okay, it's got a here only. 00:37 I see. Yeah. That I see that. Well the first thing I look at when I walk through the field is if you can, if you can see this, there's some white bleed through on a plant here. 00:44 So at each node you'll notice this little white stuff and we're on the outside of the row and that's why you're seeing it. 00:50 But you can see it on every node on this plant. What that is, is excess nitrogen. When a corn plant has too much nitrogen in it, 00:56 it gets toxic. You'll say, Hey, I don't need it right now to bleed it on the outside of the plant and it'll actually turn white and it'll oxidize. 01:02 You can take your finger and that'll wipe right off of there and stuff. So ask me the million dollar question. 01:07 Am I cutting my nitrate back or am I gonna recommend a temple here that we cut his nitrate back? Nope. No, but what, 01:14 what it is gonna say is when I walk through a field, if I don't see any of that, that means there's not, I'm a little nervous about it, okay? 01:20 But I don't wanna see way too much on every single plant. But that is not enough. It's just gonna be noticeable is what we're, 01:26 what we're talking about here. So you just don't be noticeable just to make sure that the viewer and listener, if okay, that is access. Which then makes you think, 01:32 especially with all the environmental uh, stuff, man you're overusing nitrates. You're overusing nitrous oxide, yours using nitrates. But you're saying no, 01:40 probably not. But if you didn't have any, you would wonder if the plant is deficient just by a little. A hundred percent. What you obviously want is to see that it's got just enough over, 01:48 just enough excess. Yeah. Now, and I wish we could figure out some kind of way to figure this out. Oh, that's 10 pounds. Yeah. Oh that's 18 pounds because you now it'll be great but, 01:56 but we not there yet. Then you'd back it off. So you can't tell how much maybe we're over. Okay. No, but then the thing that I'd look at here too, like we were talking about, 02:04 remember I said nitrogen is stored above each node. So this moisture that you see sitting on top of each one of these nodes is nitrogen. That plant has got left in it to use up. 02:14 So if you're on early on in a corn plant life, you want that to be inch and a half, two inches deep, you know, with moisture. But you can see on this corn, we're already at dent and everything. 02:24 So we've got less than a quarter inch of, of moisture, which is the nitrogen left there, which we want it to be that low. That means we've used up all our nitrogen, we've been efficient, 02:32 everything's great because we're a few weeks away from Yep. Done. That's right. So you're saying that's adequate amount Mark? Yes. 02:39 That's about where you wanted at this stage, you know, a quarter inches. Inches. If it was clear up here at this stage, Chad, it being that we wasted, so, 02:46 so remember we talked about first with we see it bleeding out so we wanna come full circle around and show you that this is where it is, 02:52 this is where it was a month ago. Right. You know, and so that's what we're talking about here is we don't have too much in it 'cause it's still there within reason. 03:00 It's like you wanna take the rental car back to the rental agency right when it turns E if you prepaid for the gas. That's right. That's exactly right. So, 03:07 and we're a few weeks away. Will this get to where Mark where you don't see any more sugar? No you'll, you just about as low as it'll probably get. 03:14 The other thing that I look for is you want about an eighth inch bleed through into the plant. If it's bleeding through in here a quarter inch deep, 03:22 that just means that you've got you, it's good and pretty and green, but that's not making you any money to have that extra nitrogen on there. 03:28 So this is perfect. This is a very good example of a plant that we hit nitrogen right on the money. 'cause remember guys, if we've got a lot of nitrogen left in here, 03:37 about 85% of your dry down goes back down through the roots. So if you've got a lot of excess nitrogen in here still that slows your dry down 03:43 down 'cause that's moisture. It's gotta try to beat through. So you don't want a lot left in here. And the other thing, somebody might say, 03:49 well there's excess nitrogen I overspent over applied but it's gonna be there next year necessarily. No, not nitrogen will never be there 'cause you have to, 03:56 it's used in decomposition. So you know, carbon to nitrogen is a 12 to one ratio. So you're not gonna save nitrogen, you know, from a corn plant because it's gonna be used up in decomposition. 04:05 It's gonna get used between now and next spring just through the getting rid of the fodder. That's exactly right. Yes. Got it. 04:10 Anything else that we need to look at when we, we see this? Uh, Chad that comes to mind because this is kind of a fascinating Nope. Like I said, 04:16 I was holding the ear to that plant, so this is the ear that come off of this plant that we've cut. So, you know, it's a nice ear and uh, just wanna make it, bring it full circle for y'all. 04:24 I like it. We went from the roots in a previous episode. If you haven't watched that, go and check it out. 04:27 It's pretty educational stuff as we always did provide here, uh, about uh, what you're seeing when you look at a root bowl and then we took it up stock 04:34 with Mark Coz and Chad Henderson. I'm Damian Mason coming at you from actually Temple Roads is cornfield in Maryland. Till next time, check out more great stuff at Extreme Ag Farm.