Prepare for your spring sunflower planting with NUSEED’S PRE-PLANT CHECKLIST. These tips will get your sunflower crop off to a great start for reaching your yield and profit goals.
PRE-PLANT CHECKLIST
1. Seed Selection
Get familiar with the different sunflower markets: oil, confection and conoil.
Markets play a central role in a producer’s hybrid choices. Producers must choose the sunflower hybrid for the market they wish to enter as well as the specific region where it will be planted.
Your local Nuseed sales representatives are an excellent source of information and guidance: they know the hybrids they sell, the markets they can be used for and the regions they are suited for.
2. Confirm Seed Selection
Before purchasing seed, confirm seed selection with the processor or contract.
3. Rotation
Crop rotation plays a large role in the crop’s success.
A minimum three-year rotation is recommended to reduce disease and weed pressure.
For best results, rotate sunflowers with corn or cereals, and rotate out of canola, rapeseed, dry edible beans and soybeans, or other crops susceptible to the same diseases as sunflowers.
4. Fertilization
After rotation, meeting the crop’s specific nutrition requirements is important.
Fertilize for realistic targets based on geography, soil type and annual rainfall. Fertilization timing and method is based on farming practices and may vary from region to region.
Soil analysis and a fertility management plan will identify a field’s nutrient needs. In some cases, over-fertilization can do more harm than good. For example, too much nitrogen can decrease yields and cause lodging.
Remember, fertilizer should never be placed in the seed furrow.
5. Seedbed
Proper seedbed preparation is required prior to seeding sunflowers. Whether using conventional-till or no-till, an even seedbed promotes uniform germination and emergence, and good plant stand establishment
In no-till situations, maintain clean fields with good chemical control to get plants off to a strong start.
