How about using your bin run corn for a starter fertilizer for winter wheat? The soil’s biology is hungry for Carbon. The plants need NPK, etc. Our soils have a tremendous amount of all these nutrients, only unavailable. Soil biology make unavailable nutrients become available

And volunteer corn will keep you awake at night ...

The corn was ground powder fine so it would coat the other seeds. This is w/wheat planted as the intended cash crop to be harvested in June ‘26. Any of our seeds in this mix will sprout grow, deposit a diversity of Carbon and freeze dead … no sleep lost only soil function gained

Well now. This is quite intriguing. 🤔

Well you know me, Bill Older than dirt, younger than soil. With a memory that reaches deeper than Google. Always trying to make people think differently .. not archaically

I love it. How did you crush the corn? And then I wonder, could I add some biochar to this equation?

We run it through an old fashion hammer mill, tank mixer to coat the seed. I’m not a big fan of biochar as I believe it’s just stealing C from one source to add to another. I think our photosquestered C is biological food

Interesting. I’ve been wanting to try biochar in some super tight soils. Inoculated with some special sauces, of course. I’ll let you know how it works.

Try IMOS from Guardian Grains @Ndfarmgirl1

Sorta same idea that Paul Yasa does following wheat - he seeds bin run grain sorghum then following spring seeds into that. One thing I would do is add plants that would over winter ( sorghum of course dies at 1st frost) In the replicate tests the sorghum is the cleanest and least cost cover.

Smart move using corn residue! Soil microbiology converts those locked nutrients into plant-ready forms – nature's perfect fertilizer system.

How much do you use?

About 200 pounds of very finely ground corn for about 1000 pounds of wheat seed. We wanted the wheat seed totally coated without much fines to cause flow issue. We were guessing and kinda got lucky with our ratios. We liked how it flowed

I’m intrigued about the theory, results, exc

We will keep people posted. Studies in MT back in the ‘80s showed great results without any definitive answers as to ‘why’ Back then no one checked or give life in our soils any merit Either way, the end results were more pounds of wheat with very low inputs … a win

@HayMan7140 Do you have links to that MT study?

@HayMan7140 The studies were done in the ‘80s … when links belonged to log chains and not studies. 🤭

How late can you seed warm seasons? Is there a cut off date where it wouldn’t make sense to add the corn and sunflowers when seeding hrww

It is NEVER too late to place seeds in the soil. Differing seeds bring differing carbohydrates to feed differing biological families within the community of life below ground. It’s like not feeding a human IF they are not at work. Only thing is, soil biology is ALWAYS at work

@jasonmauck1 Great thinking!

@jasonmauck1 I see this as a carbon benefit given the carbohydrate levels associated with grain but wouldn’t this cause N-immobilization? Unless you’re accounting for a nitrogen source elsewhere. And how readily avaliable would the nutrients be for wheat seed? Slower I’d suspect?

Great idea—using bin run corn mirrors how I add organic matter in my garden to boost soil health. Have you noticed stronger wheat growth or better yields with this approach?

This is our first attempt at this … stay tuned

How about wheat flour?

Wheat flour is created with C3 plants which is what we are seeding. Corn is a C4 plant, the corn plant’s carbon-hydrates feed differing biological families than what the C3 plants carbon-hydrates feed.

Interesting. I have a bit of winter wheat left to seed. I may need to get some corn we grew last year through the grinder mixer and see what it does!