S4E20: Grain Sorghum 101 (Pt.2)

Recorded: 3/16/26 

Grain sorghum is gaining attention as a resilient, drought-tolerant crop with potential to diversify crop rotations across Pennsylvania. In this episode, Justin and Dwane are once again joined with Dale Stoltzfus, Sorghum grower and owner of Specialty Grains LLC. They will continue to dive deeper into grain sorghum management and discuss some opportunities and challenges of producing high-yielding grain sorghum.

Hosts: Justin Brackenrich and Dwane Miller, Penn State Extension
Guest(s): Dale Stoltzfus 

Links:
Specialty Grains

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Transcript

Justin Brackenrich (00:18)
Welcome to another episode of the Agronomy Highlights podcast. I'm your host today, Justin Brackenrich, and I'm joined by my colleague and co-host, Dwayne Miller. Dwayne, how are you this morning?

Dwane Miller (00:27)
I'm doing well Justin. Thanks for asking. Hey, you know, we just had so much stuff to talk about in our last Sorghum episode. We're back with another one, right?

Justin Brackenrich (00:37)
Yeah, so if you joined us for the previous episode, that was Sorghum 101 with Dale Stoltzfus. We talked a lot about what he's got going on. But then as we were recording it, we kind of got this idea of like, hey, man, there's so much that goes into maybe just the planting and the management. But what about if we want to take those to the next steps? What if we want to start to hone this, get better production, get better management of this? And we said, there's just no way we can do it in one 45 minute session.

Dwane Miller (01:05)
Yeah, we started talking about it and, know, sorghum use. Oh, hey, that's just, that's a, that's an afterthought. put it on the poor ground, you know, now we're going to actually talk about, let's, let's see if we can make this a legit crop. So I'm excited to hear what, to hear what Dale has to say about that.

Justin Brackenrich (01:22)
Yeah, and I think it's really interesting because Dale is working at it not only from the agronomic part, but also the production part, the trucking part. He's got so much information to give. I have learned so much on the first one, and I'm sure I'll learn just as much on the next one. So Dwayne, if you're ready, let's get going. All right, so we're going to be back with our guest, Dale Stoltzfus. Dale, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us a second time.

Dwane Miller (01:41)
Absolutely, let's do it.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (01:49)
How about a 30-second introduction to remind people how you got into sorghum where you're at and what's your what's your farm enterprises like?

Dale Stoltzfus (01:57)
So yes, glad to be back again. We farm in the southwestern corner of Schuylkill County. What got me into grain sorghum was the fact that I have a lot of the ground that I farm is lighter dirt, shale soils, and I was looking for a crop that would be more drought tolerant and also more deer tolerant. And that's when I landed on grain sorghum. And it's almost 15 years ago that I put out my first crop of grain sorghum.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (02:24)
And one things we didn't talk about a lot and maybe we again if you're curious Dale gave us a good explanation of his journey into this but Dale is now After you know, what 10 12 years of doing this is on the National Sorghum Board You want to tell us maybe how you got involved in what the National Sorghum Board is

Dale Stoltzfus (02:42)
So I was first introduced to the National Checkoff Board in, I believe it was 2019. One of the brokers that I work with, good friends with, ⁓ Brokers grain introduced me to their leadership program that they run and said, Dale, you're taking a lot of interest in Sorghum. Why don't you get involved in the leadership class they run? So I put an application in. I was accepted to the class that was supposed to be class five.

It was supposed to start in 2020 and that's when COVID hit. So anyway, our class didn't go to 2021. it runs over an 18 month period and it has five different class sessions. So that's where I was introduced to the checkoff board. And then I was approached about applying for one of the board seats.

And the way you get on a checkoff seat is you put an application in and you're actually chosen by the secretary of agriculture. Whoa. Being appointed by that because we are actually overseeing the checkoffs are all overseen by USDA. And so I was appointed to that position December of 2025.

And then this year I was elected on to the as a board treasurer.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (04:04)
So how long is your service term on the board?

Dale Stoltzfus (04:08)
So you're elected for a three-year term, and then you're eligible to be re-elected for a second, third-year term. So most people are, and again, the re-election is done by the secretary of ag.

I'm going to put a plug in for the checkoff, the Sorghum checkoff, I may. This past year, our primary market for Sorghum had been China. And a year ago, China wasn't in the market. I am going to give a big shout out to our paid personnel on the Sorghum checkoff that run the office. The amount of work that they put in there, they work day and night to find markets.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (04:25)
Please!

Dale Stoltzfus (04:49)
to get rid of our sorghum. And our checkoff dollar went into that. We're gonna talk some about herbicide tolerant varieties. That's a really important tool for us now. The sorghum checkoff helped fund that. Checkoffs tend to get a bad rap. And I do agree there are some checkoffs that may waste some money.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (05:08)
locally people may be more familiar with perhaps like the beef checkoff or the soybean checkoff and what that is correct me if I'm wrong when you are delivering a product to a first purchaser a percentage of that fee that or or money that you're receiving a percentage of that is then Withheld and given to the checkoff, which is a board that manages that money

to use it towards research, advertisement, promotion, market development. Is that a pretty good summation of it? Okay. Okay.

Dale Stoltzfus (05:38)
Yes it is. Very good stuff.

And it is all overseen by USDA.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (05:44)
Yeah, this is not just people that elect themselves personally to a board that take your money from you when you get there and then decide to send themselves on trip. This is a very regimented board with oversight and goals. Often they're all producers of what commodity they're on the check off of. So they're showing skin in the game, so to say, about them being in this position.

Dale Stoltzfus (06:05)
That is correct.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (06:07)
Yeah, I think it's fair for us to say sometimes, you you get that ticket from the mill and you grumble a little bit about what's going, taking off that check. But rest assured, there are people on the other side of that. Like you just mentioned, Dale, working hard for that farmer to lobby for them to develop those new markets for that specific commodity.

Dale Stoltzfus (06:33)
Back to the lobbying thing. The check off dollars does not go towards lobbying.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (06:37)
Okay,

I'll take that back out. How's that? Redact it. We'll get you.

Dale Stoltzfus (06:41)
Checkoff dollar is not for lobbying. We are not allowed to lobby, period. That is a no-no.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (06:47)
Okay, so Again, I I'm not one of those be I've never paid into a checkoff. I'm not a farmer by trade But where I see the benefit to this and so, know, Dwayne's got this And Dale too if they pay the money But where we sit is a university and all the institutions and Dale mentioned it's not just the marketing but this also funds and supports a lot of the research and things that go into these crops or these these commodities

that are important, right? And so I guess I would say if you're someone paying one of these checkoffs rather than complaining, contact your board and tell them, hey, I'm paying this. Why don't we start working on this type of a product or this type of an idea, right? And give them ideas of ways that they can use that money to help support the growers.

Dale Stoltzfus (07:31)
And that is correct. And it's actually, someone like yourself, if you're going to do a project on research, you can go to any one of the checkoff boards and say, this is the research we want to do. Will you help us fund that? And that's the kind of thing we look at every board meeting that we have. We look at it and analyze it. Is it something that's been already done?

by another university already? Or is it something that needs to be done in the area they're in? was, yeah, maybe it was done in Kansas, but doesn't need to be done in Pennsylvania. We look at that. And that's what the checkoff is for, and that's what it should be doing, quite frankly.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (08:12)
Okay, well, thanks for that background information on the national board and your position there and how that checkoff works. So let's go back to maybe a little bit of a topic we covered at the very tail end of our first episode on Sorghum. And that was kind of a little bit about how we categorize varieties. You talked about how many companies will have what they call a day-long days to mid-bloom.

And you said, usually you can add 40 to that number and that'll get you close to maybe what a corn relative maturity would be. So talk to us Dale a little bit about how you pick out varieties and variety selection for sorghum.

Dale Stoltzfus (08:54)
So I was introduced with Specialty Grains and that is one of the entities that I am owner of. I'm also owner of Productive Farm Products. Productive Farm Products, sell seed fertilizer and chemistry as an independent company. And I do sell a lot of grain sorghum, different grain sorghum varieties. So the questions that I always ask,

When I'm talking to new growers, number one, I need to feel where you are in the day length that you're planting corn, because that's how I base off the variety I'm going to recommend on grain sorghum. So in our neighborhood, we're doing mostly that low 100. I'm going to say it's mid 100s. Okay. So primarily we're using a 61 to 66 day to mid bloom for full season.

Now we have a couple, I actually don't sell anything longer than 66 day to mid bloom. And you might say, yeah, I plant 110 day corn, but back to the drought thing, you have a dry weather that sets in, that plant will actually stop adding heat in degree days up and it will need to add them on the end of the growing season.

So yeah, you might grow 110 day corn, but you probably don't want to go over 105, 106 day or a 65, 66 day mid bloom on your grain sorghum variety. Then as we go north, I actually have one variety that's a 51 day to mid bloom. So that's like a 90, low 90s day corn. We've used that variety down along the Mason-Dixon line as a double crop behind wheat.

done really, really well with it, with a short season variety, opposed to planting double crop beans. But then we'll also take that variety and use it as a full season variety when we go up north into the higher elevations of the state.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (10:54)
Okay. And that was something that my ears perked up when you first mentioned full season and I'm going, holy cow, are there double crop opportunities for grain sorghum? But you mentioned that's typically down along the Maryland border.

Dale Stoltzfus (11:09)
I'd say mostly, we're right on, so I'm Southwest Schuyklill County, I'm just north of the Blue Mountain. I probably don't recommend double cropping sorghum unless you're south of the Blue Mountain, south of I-78. That's sort of the dividing line of what I found to work for double crop sorghum. I've had enough of people that tried it and it didn't work. And if we want to talk at all on double crop sorghum, I have some.

recommendations for that as well which is totally different than full season.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (11:38)
So and that's double cropped kind of its own thing, It's almost when you start selecting any variety for double cropping, it's almost counterintuitive to what you think the answer would usually be, at least with soybeans, right? It's you want a longer day, something like this, right? When initially you would think, well, I want something short, right? So if you do have, you know, that might be a great follow-up episode or a way to contact Dale if you are in a position of wanting to double crop to make sure you're getting that right.

One of things I was doing was kind of, I don't want to call it fact checking Dale because I don't want anyone to think he doesn't know he's talking about, but we'll call it a learning opportunity for Justin was looking at some of these Googling corn maturity versus growing degree days versus sorghum milo growing degree days. And if you're not familiar growing degree days, we sometimes call it heat units.

speaker-2 (12:27)
basic

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (12:27)
it's

some wonky math, but you're taking the daily max and the daily minimum dividing them by two and then putting them over a base. And so if you're talking about alfalfa or orchard grass, the base could be in the 40s. For something like corn or grain sorghum, we're using a base of 50. And so it's kind of an accumulative number. And for corn, roughly we're like 2,400 to 3,000 heat units, It's that growing degree days.

Sorghum actually is exactly the same right if you start to Google it that that shows up almost exactly the same However, a lot of those ratings are based on that mid bloom that we've talked about So make sure if you are looking at your area and your heat units You're not looking at like a total cumulative heat unit from let's say May to October But you're looking at kind of what's happening more in the middle part of your year so that you can get it to that mid bloom and then finish it

unlike what we're dealing with with corn.

Dale Stoltzfus (13:28)
So I want to add one thing into why it's so critical to choose the right variety. One of the things I found that hurts yield the most is when you have a variety that is too long for the time of the year you're planning it or for the area you're planning it in. I receive a lot of bushels and I unload a lot of trucks. Test weight correlates to yield completely. When you have a lower test weight,

the kernel size will be, or I call them the berry size, the berry size will be small and shriveled up. And then when I look at, so if I'm looking at a 15, 60 bushel yield, that berry is gonna be half the size of when I look at someone that's growing 200 bushel sorghum And that correlates really, really closely into planting the correct variety at the correct place. So it's very, very critical that we are,

selecting the correct variety. It's very critical that we're planting on time.

Think about where sorghum is grown. Sorghum is mostly grown in dry areas in the southwest. lot longer growing season than what we have here. So we are actually on the northern edge of where we can adaptive or that grain sorghum is adapted to.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (14:44)
And I'm not trying to put Dale on the spot or sell his services unwantedly. But I think this is one of those cases like if you're to try Googling planting information on sorghum across the tiers of Pennsylvania, you may be disappointed in how much information is available because it's just it's not as common that there's been as much work done. So this is where people like Dale as an expert calling Dale touching base. Don't just just kind of

Take what we've talked about with a growing length, add 40 and run with it, right? This is a time for you to do your homework, reach out to someone and make sure you're actually planting what is recommended. Because there's nuance to all of this.

Dale Stoltzfus (15:23)
And that's why I'm excited about this podcast though too, because I'm excited to work with Penn State Extension as well to help you get the information that you need, you know, maybe get you connected with research projects that we can fund through the checkoff to get more information readily available to the farmers out there. That's why I'm really, really excited about this.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (15:48)
I have a note on top of my page that says Sorghum Checkoff question mark exclamation point, right? we're talking about all these things and admittedly, most of the knowledge I have on this has come through Googling over the last few weeks, right, to prep myself for this, but it's not something that I'm working with all the time that I'm just holding knowledge like I do with beans or corn because this is something new for me.

Dale Stoltzfus (16:11)
And there's another nuance that goes into that. climate is so different than a lot of the climates that are raising this are dry, arid climates. And we're anything but that. We're humid. We're short growing season. In fact, when I look at population, if I can jump into population for a minute.

we're looking at growing, I found 100,000 seeds on 15 inch rows to work really, really well. Higher population does not pick up yield in dry, droughty soils. It's actually gonna drop your yield because you have too many plants that you're trying to maintain moisture for that we don't have. So you actually end up with smaller heads which actually ends up with lower yield. I've actually found lowering the population to actually pick up the yield rather than picking up.

on dry soils. Good soils we can pick up that population maybe a little bit, maybe 120,000 for a 200 bushel yield. I had a grower that dropped 30,000 population one year and still had 100 bushel sorghum. Dryline Texas, they don't plant over 50,000. In fact, they plant 30,000 on a regular basis and on a good year they'll have 100 bushel, on a poor year they'll have 30 bushel.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (17:24)
One last thing on varieties, Dale. I'll open up my local seed catalog here. And boy, I've got corn options like you wouldn't believe. But when it comes to sorghum, one, two, three, four, there's five there. It seems like our choices are more limited for particular varieties. Should people, stick to

seed company that they've been dealing with? Do they need to look around for more options when it comes to varieties?

Dale Stoltzfus (17:56)
I'm going to say work with someone that you trust. Ideally, it's going to be someone that has some knowledge on the crop, but work with someone you trust. And I realize again, I sell seed, I highly respect other seed dealers completely. But make sure that you, as an advisor, make sure you're advising something you know on.

Get a home

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (18:18)
It's an

excellent piece of advice for anything, sorghum or otherwise, right? Correct.

Dale Stoltzfus (18:23)
It is so important that you do that because if you want to repeat customer, this is talking now to the seed sellers. Make sure you know what you're recommending and recommending the same thing so your customer comes back to you. There are herbicide options out there now that we did not have five, six years ago. We do handle two of them and the third one Pioneer has. They are tools to use.

if you need them. It is, and we'll get into herbicides here in a minute, but herbicides, we are really, really limited, especially on grass herbicides, what we can spray. And a herbicide tolerant variety is a really, really important tool if we need it. I think we'll get into that a little more.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (19:04)
I hope everyone can keep up with us right because we just kind of jump around from one place to the next but If a new person right so that's kind of what we're tailoring this to and making progress and considering this Your advice would be a hundred thousand on 15 inch rows for kind of a starting population

Dale Stoltzfus (19:21)
Yes. And then if you're planning on 30 inch rows, drop it to 75,000. What I have found out, if you ever come into my place on my farm, my driveway goes right down through the center of the farm. And it's both sides of my driveway are all plots and it's different things every year. and I highly advise everybody to do a plot, try something, at least something once a year to see if it works on your farm in anything. But.

What I have found out doing population checks on 30 inch rows, I'll drop a hundred thousand seeds. I generally never had more than 70 to 75,000 final, final count. Why spend the extra money on seed? It doesn't pay you back.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (20:04)
Yep, and so you're kind of thought and maybe I'm extrapolating but where Texas in the dryer areas are 50 to 30,000 here, we're, you I'm not going to pick one doing too much, but where you've got some dryer, shalier, ledgier type soils, would you recommend just kind of preemptively scaling that down from 100K knowing that, hey, if we get dried, it's really going to hurt? what are your thoughts for something like that?

Dale Stoltzfus (20:30)
Definitely. If you know you're not going to have the yield anyway, yeah, why spend the extra cost on seed? We're actually going to play around with variable rate this coming year. And we are going to actually plant on the shale knobs. We're probably going to drop our population back to 50,000. Just because I know that every time we have a dry year, those shale knobs dry out first, why have the plant there?

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (20:40)
cool.

Dale Stoltzfus (20:54)
This is the one other thing. talked a little bit in the first episode about tillering. Sorghum will tiller. And in the West, if they have moisture, will tiller out. We always have moisture for tillering, but we don't have the day length that we need to mature those tillers. So that's actually one of the reasons we plan to hire population. I actually don't want the tillers.

because they're actually like corn suckers. They really never get a head on them that matures enough to make any grain. So that's one of the reasons we plant higher populations than they do in Texas and Kansas.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (21:32)
Yeah, so you're actually just trying to discourage tillering for that reason, because it's going to do anything for us anyway. Populations locally here, I would say if you've got some more challenging ground, we were in that 75 to maybe 80,000 range for a recommendation.

Dale Stoltzfus (21:36)
100

That's a good recommendation.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (21:56)
Let's shift a little bit. Let's talk about fertility. Locally right now, you're in tune, depending on when this episode comes out, I'd be interested to hear what the fertilizer prices are maybe when this episode does come out because they're just going crazy now and guys are talking fertility. So what do we need to think about with respect to

grain sorghum when it comes to fertility tail.

Dale Stoltzfus (22:22)
So I always relate it to corn because it's the easiest way to do it. If your yield goal, basically take a hundred and, I'm going to say a hundred and, if your yield goal on your sorghum is 140 bushel, feed it like you would 140 bushel corn.

What I've seen, I don't have any official research on this, but what I've seen on my operation on nitrogen usage, I can actually get away with the amount of manure I'm using. I can get away with total nitrogen applied, and I do take credit for my manure application. On corn, I can go to about a three quarter pound of nitrogen per bushel of yield.

Sorghum, am still seeing much better test weight when you maintain that one pound of nitrogen per bushel of yield. And if you're utilizing manure, take credit for some of that nitrogen in it. Get a manure sample done. It's a great way to actually cut back fertilizer costs.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (23:19)
Great point. Get that sample done. I was trying to do some nutrient balancing for somebody here locally and using some manure and a corn crop. Well, what's that manure really worth? Well, we're not sure. I said, all right, we're going to use the agronomy guy. We're going to take some book values, but a book value is just that. We don't know really what's in there, but that's important.

Dale Stoltzfus (23:46)
It's a cheap price to pay for the information you get out of it. To get a manure analysis done.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (23:52)
Yeah,

yeah, I think part of this podcast is is shamelessly we plug analysis right because we sit here and we can throw out numbers but soil analysis manure analysis, know all of that stuff Fertilizer six hundred dollars a ton ten dollars fifteen dollars for a manure analysis It doesn't take long for that to pay for itself if you're changing, you know, twenty pounds an acre, right and and so

Look at the return on investment on a little bit of your time take a sample find out where you're at with those types of things and then make sure you're crediting What I wanted to point out I'm going through my notes, but I think this is the first time that maybe we've talked about this Is is one of these ideas that it's not just something you can put out there and expect it to grow right? We've we've kind of talked the populations was good. The planting was was pretty easy. We didn't need to change things

But this importance to nitrogen to that I think might be a little bit challenging to what people have thought or what they've heard about sorghum, right? now I want to follow up on nitrogen source and timing, right? Are you putting a second application out? Is this all going up front? What does that look like in the terms of sorghum?

Dale Stoltzfus (24:58)
So every operation is different. And I'll tell you the journey of what I had done over the years. I have done this nitrogen application. I started on the low end. I know that and what I actually put down. And then I went, actually switched from 15-inch rows to 30-inch rows so that I could side dress it with drop nozzles.

What I found out though is I felt I was losing yield. And one of the ways I was losing yield was with a platform harvesting sorghum, with a platform on the combine, we were having issues with the heads falling off the front of the cutter bar. Because there wasn't enough of product in front, because you're cutting this 18 inches off the ground. There was nothing in there to keep pushing those heads into the head. What I found is we have less

field loss planning on 15 inch rows using a platform. So what I started doing then is actually side dressing with stream nozzles, stabilized nitrogen when the sorghum was two to three inches tall. I had done that for a number of years.

Two years ago, 2024, we were very, very, very dry in May and beginning of June when it was time to top dress. And I wasn't going to go through my nitrogen out there if I didn't know that plant was going to be able to live, so we didn't lose it. Even with stabilizer, I did not want to lose it. The sorghum kept on growing. I had no idea how that stuff could grow with the amount of moisture we didn't

The sorghum was 12 inches tall when I went out and side dressed it.

And I could have cried it burned it so bad it looked terrible. I streamed it over top and it just looked pathetic. The interesting thing was we actually put some fungicide down with a drone on sorghum acres. I typically don't use fungicide.

When we side dressed or when we put that fungicide down right about 50 % bloom, I was walking that field before we put the fungicide on. I could find no leaf tissue burn on those plants, period. And after we put that nitrogen down, those plants were, the tops were totally brown. That's how much burn we had. Now this past year, we know what kind of spring we had.

We were extremely wet when it was time to plan and I had to cut my labor back. We bought a plan or that had nitrogen on it. So we actually applied our nitrogen through the planner with stabilizer. And I did not side dress after that. I feel that in my yield scenario and the yield goal that I had, we didn't hurt or yield at all by doing that. A stabilizer is very, very critical with that though. We need to stabilize it.

so that we hold it long enough, especially if we're getting a lot of rain. We're gonna talk high yield scenarios later. That's a different story.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (27:48)
Okay, that was going to be my question is what yield in that scenario, what yield were you shooting for

Dale Stoltzfus (27:55)
was shooting for 150. And we ended up with 140. And that was because of planning date. We planned it 10 days later than we should have. But it was because of weather.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (28:04)
Yeah, and you mentioned there in the first episode, hey, when it was time in your custom operation, when it's time to plant sorghum, you're going to stop everything and you're going to plant sorghum, right? You're going to get it in the ground, try to get it done, get it off.

Dale Stoltzfus (28:12)
because

And to back that theory up, so we finished planting that farm, 65 acres. It was 10 days till we could plant again. We lost 20 more bushel.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (28:27)
Perfect example this spring of what happens when you don't have that window and you have a limited time to do something and then the rains come back.

So how about instead of nitrogen P and K situation? We look in pretty similar to corn with that as well.

Dale Stoltzfus (29:57)
P and K is this in, does the agronomy guide have that in? I'm not sure, agronomy guide's actually a really good tool to use. I use the agronomy guide all the time for the chemistry side.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (30:07)
I'm a bad guy, My agronomy guide's sitting in the truck,

Dale Stoltzfus (30:10)
agronomy guide on the chemistry side is very, very accurate. I have found everything that's printed in there to be extremely true. And I tried to push the books on a couple of things and got kicked in the pants because of it. On the fertility side, I actually consulted an app for nutrient application. It is exactly the same as corn on P & K. Basically, it's...

If your yield goal is 140 bushel corn and you want 140 bushel sorghum, it's the same on P & K.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (30:41)
Well,

that makes it real easy then for us to have somebody that's thinking about this from a switch standpoint say, okay, know, if we're going to replace some corn acres with potentially some sorghum from a fertility standpoint, we're going to look just about the same with that. Are you delivering the P & K fertility? Is that...

done using that planter as well.

Dale Stoltzfus (31:12)
⁓ It is not. are everything we use. We use manure in everything. So yeah, I have not found... I'm not saying I never will use starter fertilizer at all if I need to, it's... I'm not relying on my starter fertilizer for my P & K.

Seed cost, we didn't talk about seed cost at all. This is the biggest cost saving factor on grain sorghum. If you're using a conventional variety of seed, your seed cost is about $25 an acre.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (31:39)
And you said that's typically six to eight pounds somewhere in there is what you're is what you're seating at.

Dale Stoltzfus (31:46)
Now, obviously, if you use a herbicide tolerant variety, it's gonna add cost to that, it's significant cost and significant seed cost savings.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (31:57)
as a refresher, we've talked a lot about varieties now. We've hit on to fertilizers as well. I would like to follow up on what you just said about the agronomy guide and herbicides. You've mentioned a couple of times that there are some tolerances to these.

But why don't you walk us through a little bit of the herbicide program that you're using and how these chemistries can help in production.

Dale Stoltzfus (32:18)
So number one, we're planting this crop probably, and it depends on the area you're in, but probably right around the May 15th at the earliest to May 20 range. So if you're utilizing cover crops, think again, I said a while ago about the importance of soil to seed contact. If you're utilizing cover crops or even if you're not and you have weeds, get them killed early, get that field cleaned up.

do an early pre-pass and maybe throw a little bit of mesotrione in there, Callisto, and with that, that's where I put my Callisto application down. You look at a Callisto label, the Callisto says you have to put that down 10 days prior to plant.

And then we do our planting. And then right after planting, I am going to do another burn down application of I don't care what you're using, but another burn down application. And that's when I'm going to put my Dual and Atrazine down. We need all that we rely very, very, very heavily on these pre-programs because we do not have many tools to go back in post-emerge.

control especially grass. Broadleaves we're pretty good at. We can use 2,4-D, we can use Dicamba up to 12 inches I think is what the Agronomy Guide reads and the Agronomy Guide is correct on that. I have pictures of using Dicamba too late and the amount of ... you can knock 20 to 30 bushwalk really quick. Husky is another really good option.

goes late for broad leaves, can, I think, use that up to 30 inches. Grasses, if you have a conventional variety of sorghum, once that grass is over two inches tall, you'll never control it. If the grass is under two inches tall, quinclorlac with atrazine and adjuvants, you can control grass with that. You can also control grass. That's when your herbicide-tolerant varieties come in.

If my recommendation always is if you know you have foxtail fall panning and issues, utilize these herbicide tolerant varieties. EmuFlex is one, FirstAct is another one, and Pioneers, I'm sorry, yes, Inzen. So those are the three options that you have. And quite frankly, they're not, the FirstAct is,

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (34:26)
In the

Dale Stoltzfus (34:35)
probably the most effective on grass. You can use it when grass is higher than Inzen or Emiflex. But then you also pay more for your seed costs. I'm gonna call that herbicide-tolerant varieties as an insurance program.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (34:50)
So I'm like frantically looking through and turning pages in the agronomy guy trying to keep up with this so I can ask an intelligent question. But you know, I think that's that's an interesting part of this one too, right? I guess my mind keeps going back to this idea that people think of this is just this crop they're going to put out and they're going to get a profit off of it or they're going to get a grain, right? ⁓

And I think the more we peel back some of these things, now we're talking about a pretty in-depth herbicide program, right? We're talking about the same thing that we're preaching at all of these meetings for corn and soybeans is we've got to have strong residual. We don't want to get ourselves in these positions that we have. I guess maybe this would be a broad statement, but it seems that we have more problems with broad leaf tolerance and things right now with our modes than we do with the grasses. But...

we don't have great grass control in something like this. And so how are you going to target that? How are you gonna have a really effective burn down with an overlapping program upfront? So I think that this is that second point, right? Nitrogen was something that had to be key and now an herbicide program is something that has to be on your mind and prepared for to grow good sorghum.

Dale Stoltzfus (35:57)
That is 100 % correct. And I cannot over emphasize it enough that we need that pre program. We need full rates of dual full rates of atrazine. Because if you're using a conventional variety of grain sorghum, yeah, you can use quinchloralac, but you're going to pay. It's a very expensive program to use. And it's so, so effective.

And I'm saying over two inches tall in the grass. I mean it. It's not. If it's over two inches tall, you will not control it. It will not control it.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (36:26)
And I think maybe it's like most of what you're listing and most of what I'm seeing things like the dual product, biceps, ⁓ atrazines, know, we I'm looking at the guide we've got warrant, we've got prowl, you know, a lot of these are very common products that if you're working with corn, there shouldn't be a huge learning curve to like understanding or recognizing some names that you can use in this type of product or growing sorghum.

Dale Stoltzfus (36:52)
I think we're under utilizing is Sharpen and Verdict actually as a pre to hit those roundup resistant weeds. That's actually a really good tool to use as a pre. Verdict has Sharpen in it. can actually, a lot of times I'm actually building programs that work cross as a pre-program. We're actually using exactly the same pre-program on corn and sorghum both together.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (37:14)
And think Sharpen is one of those that I kind of like a lot because it doesn't matter, right? There are very few things that you're going to have issues with planting with a Sharpen type operation on your farm after, whether it's small grain, whether it's sorghum, whether it's corn, whether it's beans, right? Like it fits very nice in there in a nice pre-operation.

Dale Stoltzfus (37:34)
One more benefit to Sharp and it came down a lot in price.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (37:38)
well see that was always the thing, right? People thought sharp. But typically what you're at a one ounce rate or something like that. So that jug goes a ways, but yeah, you're right. It was high.

Dale Stoltzfus (37:40)
Yeah.

And you may go up to two ounce rate on it if you're struggling with burcucumber. We've seen it actually bumping that rate up help control burcucumber better.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (37:58)
Okay, I think the last thing we want to touch on before we go into this high-yielding conversation is disease. We mentioned that a little bit in the beginning that we may kind of anecdotally or Dale may see more quote unquote natural resistances to some of these things, but we talked about things like anthracnose. You mentioned the use of a fungicide. So let's touch on disease management.

Dale Stoltzfus (38:20)
So it starts with seat selection first.

I would say anthracnose is probably our number one nemesis when it comes to disease. A lot of your sorghum varieties do not have great anthracnose tolerance. you'll think it's standing great. And if you delay a harvest, ask me how I know this. I found it out by the hard way. I delayed harvest and it blew down on me. And when sorghum blows down,

⁓ Unless you have it planted on 30 inch rows and you can find a row head to use to pick it back up again, it is down on the ground and you will not get it back. And if you try to put your head down, it's a very wet stalk, it combines very hard, you will be extremely frustrated. When it's time to harvest sorghum, harvest sorghum. Don't delay harvest, get it done. Especially if you're in a high deer pressure area. That's another reason to harvest very quickly.

So watch your disease ratings. I'm gonna mention planting sorghum multiple years in a row. When I first started doing sorghum, I tried it and we were talking about a 30 % yield loss doing sorghum two years in a row. I have 15, 12, 15 years ago, all the fungicides available we have now.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (39:29)
Okay.

Dale Stoltzfus (39:36)
We also have some disease or some varieties that have much better disease tolerance now than what we had then. We have been doing it in the last couple of years, some sorghum on sorghum and having very good success with it. Highly recommend doing a fungicide application. Timing on that is 50 % heading. I said bloom earlier, it's actually 50 % heading. It's one they would recommend to do that.

I don't know if the agronomy guide has too much on that, but maybe the extension office or a crop consultant to figure out which fungicide you're going to use to do that. There are a couple of them that work.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (40:08)
Yeah, think that Crop Protection Network that we work with, well not we, but our Extension folks work with a lot to do these updated disease efficacy things. I think they're going to have something on sorghum because they're not just researchers from the mid-Atlantic region. There are people from all across the country working through that crop protection. So I think my advice would be directing people to look at that because it's going to give you

the disease type the efficacy of that but I think then where the next step and where people like Dale or the University may help is checking that label to make sure it is a Pennsylvania labeled fungicide and not just something that may be labeled for Kansas or Something like that before you start purchasing and applying

Dale Stoltzfus (40:53)
is very true. Personally, what I have found, I do not need, unless I'm doing sorghum and sorghum, my type ground I have, I know I don't, I top out at that 150, 160 bushel yield goal, fungicide probably is not going to pay me to put down. But it is something when we go to the high yield that I will be recommending to use then.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (41:16)
And I think, again, this is maybe kind of on the edge of the knowledge that I have. So maybe Dwayne or Dale can back me up. But in my experiences, when you start using fungicides, you start keeping your plant grain a little longer, right? And you start to have a little bit later harvest, especially in soybeans is where I see it a lot. And so if your variety is not selected well,

and you do have that dry period and now you start putting fungicides on, you may have even wetter or more challenging time harvesting because of this kind of combined effect.

Dale Stoltzfus (41:46)
We have harvested grass grain sorghum.

At 18%, I'm typically trying to get mine off around 18%. And we have harvested, if we didn't have frost, typically we have frost and it kills it all. There is a fair amount of harvest aid that's used and primarily it makes it not for dry down. You will not dry the sorghum down faster with a harvest aid. It's actually for combine, ease of harvest. I'm going to call it.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (41:58)
Okay.

Dale Stoltzfus (42:14)
It is a gummy stalk. So when you have that grain stalk and you run a few hundred acres through the combine, you can start plugging sieves. The cleaning area, if you're not careful, just because of that, it's a very sugary plant. It makes everything sticky.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (42:32)
Dale, In our locale, we don't have a lot of equipment to apply those fungicides on corn, for example, at tasseling time. How are you applying that fungicide at 50 % heading?

Dale Stoltzfus (42:47)
Everything I've done was with a drone. Drones are easy. I mean, there's a lot more of them around than what they're used to be. They're very easy to transport. You throw them on a trail or you go to a job so you can get, can have a whole lot further reach with a drone. The downside to a drone is with our woodland that we have around and power lines.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (42:49)
Okay.

Dale Stoltzfus (43:12)
It makes it that we can't maybe reach the edge of the field. That's the pick I have against a drone in small grain. It's a pick I would have against a drone, period. But a drone is a very, very, very good tool to use. I've seen very good coverage out of it. They have worked very, very well for us.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (43:28)
One last thing before we close the book, maybe on, quote, pest management, you know, talk about, we're talking about diseases and we mentioned deer a lot in this, in these, both these episodes. One thing I haven't heard you mention Dale is birds. Any thoughts on, on bird management? how to, how to keep birds out, especially timely harvest, right? But what else?

Dale Stoltzfus (43:53)
So I've never had a lot of complaints about bird issues.

I had one person that would have complained about it. It's typically not something that I've had severe issues that I felt it hurt big yields anyway. It can be an issue. I actually honestly think the more acres there are around the less bird problem there is just because it spreads them out through a lot of acres.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (44:16)
Yeah. Yeah. So we're kind of pushing up on time, but I think is like our last topic here. I would like to go into what you're working with with your high yielding sorghum compared to what we've discussed and just kind of maybe traditional Milo growth and talk to us about what you're doing, why you're doing it and how you see this, this kind of progressing over the next couple of seasons.

Dale Stoltzfus (44:39)
So this all comes back to dollars and cents. The guy I'm working with on it closely had started doing it because he had issues with vomitoxin in corn. So he was trying a little bit more of a rotation in adding another crop in his rotation.

That's why I started looking at it and he's in very, very, very good soils.

The interesting thing was when you put dollars to it, he actually was making more money. Of course, sorghum did not yield what corn did, but he was still making more money because his inputs were less than what they were with grain sorghum. So there's a couple of things that I see that are really critical for high yield scenarios.

I'm talking where you can utilize 180 to 225 bushel corn on a consistent basis. If you're looking to put corn or sorghum in those fields, you're probably going to utilize just a little bit higher population planting, maybe 125,000 population versus 120,000. You know you're not going to run out of water, so maybe we can bump that population up just a little bit.

You may end up using an in-furrow fungicide to start. Just make sure it's labeled for sorghum. You want to keep that plant healthy. I mean, it's basically the same principle, same practice. A fungicide application at half heading. There's something about a fungicide that keeps that, and you probably can explain it better than I can, but keeps that

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (46:03)
more.

Dale Stoltzfus (46:15)
that plant growing and putting nutrients into that grain. And what I've seen in a high yield is the berry is always bigger. That berry will be twice as big. You're not necessarily a lot more in population, but the berry is a lot bigger. It's like a soybean. high yield soybean is much bigger than a lower yield soybean. Your kernel corn is much deeper in a high yield corn versus it's the same principle.

⁓ Getting that head to finish from top to bottom and keeping those berry sizes the same from top to bottom. You're to see a lot bigger berry on the bottom in a high-yield scenario than you will in a low-yield scenario. Yeah, don't know. Are there more questions you have related to it? It's relatively new that we're looking at it this closely. Tissue tests, always a great tool to utilize.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (47:00)
Would you look to split apply nitrogen?

Dale Stoltzfus (47:05)
Yes.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (47:06)
So what is the timing for that split applied nitrogen? Maybe I'll back up and ask that question too. How do you growth stage sorghum and like know when that timing is that you would want to do something like that?

Dale Stoltzfus (47:18)
Tell you the truth, there's not good solid data on this.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (47:22)
Okay, I'll put that aside my check off dollar highlight star.

Dale Stoltzfus (47:26)
I do not feel we have good solid data on that because we can't go to our friends in the West because of the season so much longer. Yeah. It's actually something that I would love to see some local research done.

That's not an answer, but it's the truth.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (47:42)
Well, like we said earlier, right if you don't feel comfortable advising on something It's not worth but what is your timing if you're doing a second one? What are you kind of shooting for?

Dale Stoltzfus (47:52)
Well, in there, again, it depends how you're planning it and equipment that you have to how you're going to apply it. I would probably lean towards a dry application versus a liquid application if you're going to be applying it when it's that six, eight inches tall.

There's some stages in there with sorghum that you want to watch that you're not doing any application to a little bit like corn. ⁓ And I don't have that memorized. think the agronomy guide may have some of that in it too.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (48:14)
Okay.

Okay. it's great because I think that there's always room for improvement and growth. And I think this just kind of shows that while this is a very viable alternative budding crop, there's still a lot of information to know. I think that goes back to kind of what you said maybe in the first one or earlier today is

You should be trying something new every year. So this is one of those opportunities for a producer to look out there and say, hey, when am I going to put this out, right? And maybe do a couple of their own trials to see what benefits them in their ground and their growing season for some of these post applications in a higher yield scenario.

Dale Stoltzfus (48:56)
Yes, that is correct. guess as we wrap up, I'm going to say just make sure you're working with someone that is knowledgeable in the crop that you want to grow. I don't care what crop it is, but especially as you work towards these crops that aren't grown nearly as, there's a lot less information about them available. And there are some crop consultants out there that are working with lot of acres on it now that have a lot of knowledge.

I talk to them on a regular basis. We bounce stuff back and forth. I'm going to be sitting down this afternoon with one again.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (49:29)
think that landscape has changed maybe in the last 10 years, right? Where we've seen it grow from basically a, boy, there's only five guys in the local area growing it and not a lot of knowledge. And now there's still a lot to be learned about the crop. But to your point, Dale, there are folks that are out there that have been doing this a while and are in pretty good tune on.

on what to do with it.

Dale Stoltzfus (49:58)
Yes, that is correct.

Justin Brackenrich/Dwane Miller (50:00)
Okay, well Dale, we thank you for joining us a second time as we kind of shoot out here and we wrap up for the day. I think this has been such good discussion. If you didn't listen to the first episode, go back to Sorghum 101 and check that one out because I think they kind of build well as different ideas and thoughts and progressions. You know where I sit in extension and working with producers?

I think that we have to start making some changes about our cropping systems if we want to be productive. Dale's done a good job outlining where to start if sorghum is where you think that can go. But we're going to link Dale's contact information in this podcast. So if you've got questions, hopefully he'll be willing to talk to you. Maybe I'm putting words in his mouth, but I'm hoping he'll talk to you if you call. But again, thanks for joining. Thanks for listening. Dale, we may be calling on you in the future, but otherwise,

Thanks everyone, have a great day.