Northern Plains farmers may already thinking about how to handle side-dress nitrogen applications this year. Even though rainfall is behind normal in the southern Red River Valley, the corn still looks green. “There’s no lost nitrogen due to wet field conditions. We’ve only used about one inch or two of soil moisture in the crop development of corn,” said Derek Crompton, technical agronomist, Channel Seed. “If the rains continue, we’ll be ok, but if you think about a 150 bushel corn crop, that uses on average 16 inches of rain.” Moisture is a good measure for what’s needed to side-dress. “If I’m four inches behind on rainfall, if there’s fertility for 150 bushels of corn, that’s adequate.” Crompton also encourages farmers to watch for Goss’s Wilt in the dry conditions. Hear the story.