Good morning, guys. Evan here with EZ Custom Ag. Back in front of the whiteboard to keep discussing Field GX from AgriGold. This morning we’re talking about Family H. Let’s go over here.
Family H, the hybrid that I have the most experience with is 639-40, one of the top -selling corn hybrids for AgriGold in Ohio. So, you’re going to see here, it’ll go anywhere. Very good tolerance to different soil types, different planting practices, whether you’re conventional, or no -till. It can go over a lot of different acres. One thing we do watch out for is we don’t want to move it too far south because southern rust is a weakness of this family. Fungicide can help you overcome a lot of that, but we’ve got to watch where southern rust comes in so late. If you’re known to have that, Family H might be something that we want to stay away from.
Starting at the top here, our flex comes in girth and length. So, as we’ve talked about before, when we’re flexing girth and length, we want to have nitrogen skewed towards the front. So, we hit that V5, V10 timeframe, make that plant as happy as we can to build that ear.
Grain fill medium. So, we still don’t have nitrogen at the end. It’s not the long grain fill period that we have in other families, but we still want to keep that plant alive and healthy as long as we can, just to blow those kernels up while it’s filling. Again, comes with a medium grain fill.
We’ve got above average test weight. It’s not as high as some of our other families, but it’s better than you’re going to see in some of those families that have the short grain fill period where they’re not able to pack all that starch into the kernel.
Like I said before, nitrogen split application simply because nitrogen seems to be tied to grain fill as much as anything. Trying to get that nitrogen later in the season, keep it healthy for as long as we can. Also, if you’re front loading all of your nitrogen, how much have you lost between when you put it on in March or April to, that V10 timeframe when you’re determining that ear length where you’re getting that flex. So, it’s all about managing what that plant demands at that certain time, trying to get as many kernels in that plant as you can.
Last thing, we’ll look at here is drainage. It’s pretty good at having wet feet, doesn’t go as well on dry ground, but still goes almost anywhere so it can tolerate multiple soil types, but if you’ve got a field that’s skewed a little bit too, or maybe part of it’s tiled, part of it’s not, this family can really, bridge that gap and you can plant it across the whole field, and you’re going to see great results.
So family H is an interesting one. One you’re definitely going to want to put fungicide on. One you’re probably going to want to harvest a little bit earlier in the season, and one that does not have the stock strength of some of the other families, but the experience that we’ve had on our farm, it’s quite a yielder.
So we’ll see you next time in front of the whiteboard for our final family, Family J.