Earlier this week, we received a fertility question from a corn grower related to phosphorus use. You can check out the grower’s complete question and the answer from Farm Journal Field Agronomists Ken Ferrie and Missy Bauer below. We hope this information is helpful to you and other corn growers, as we all gear up for the 2025 planting season.
Question: In light of the limited soil mobility of phosphorus, do you believe a shallow application (with Bandit 360) of 10-34-0 would provide a corn plant with sufficient phosphorus during the early growth stages of V3 to V6 when planted into cool soils (50 to 55 degrees) with a soil Bray P1 of 35+ ppm? Or would it be more effective to broadcast and incorporate MAP before planting?
Answer: Farm Journal Field Agronomist Ken Ferrie’s recommendation would be to band the phosphorus. The reason is when we talk about phosphorus – whether it’s a 20 P1, 30 P1 or 35 P1 – the availability on your soil test doesn’t show up until the soil temperature is 65° F or higher. If you’re going to plant in 50° to 55° soils and are looking for a quick response, starter fertilizer is going to give you a better response than a broadcast application.
As you noted, phosphorus fertilizer is pretty immobile in soil. That’s why broadcasting phosphorus doesn’t give you the same response as a starter. You want to place phosphorus where a corn plant can access it.
As for making an application using the 360 Bandit, this tool is designed to band nitrogen fertilizer with a planter, positioning it 1" below the soil surface, on both sides of the row, and 3" from the seed. So, it’s still a banded form of phosphate, which is good, but as far as allowing you to get the full horsepower out of your starter, the attachment makes too shallow an application to be fully effective.
Instead, for better results, you might want to use the 360 Wave attachment. It’s designed to enhance seed-trench closing and promote rapid starter uptake.
The 360 Bandit and 360 Wave are both products of 360 Yield Center. Industry counterparts to these two attachments are the Precision Planting FurrowJet and Conceal.
The FurrowJet is a planter fertilizer attachment which allows you to place not only an in-furrow starter fertilizer, but also a dual-band of fertilizer 3/4″ on each side of the seed. The Conceal attachment places nitrogen in the soil 3” away from the seed.
If you value the benefits starter fertilizer offers in corn, you might like the performance of a starter fertilizer relay system even more, says Farm Journal Field Agronomist Missy Bauer.
The relay system consists of a two-step fertilizer application strategy at planting. Test-plot data we’ve gathered over four seasons (2019 to 2022) have shown a consistent 9.3-bu.-per-acre average yield advantage when adding the relay system with the FurrowJet compared to the 2x2 application alone.
You can learn more about this application strategy from our Farm Journal Test Plot work in Michigan at Fertilizer Relay System Gives Corn a Big Push.
More farmer questions about the use of starter fertilizer and the answers from our agronomists are available here: Dive Deep into Starter Fertilizer This Spring
