Renewable Farming

WakeUP Spring amplifies early root growth by stimulating mycorrhiza

The “classic” original benefit of WakeUP Spring on corn or soybeans is foliar spraying at 5 ounces per acre to build more massive, deep-reaching roots.

WakeUP Spring moves quickly through the leaf into crop metabolism and amplifies the flow of sugars and other nutrients from leaves through the phoem tubes into roots and other new growing points.

The roots exude up to half of the sugar and nutrients like amino acids via root hairs, stimulating a profuse colonization of beneficial mycorriza. These threadlike fungi have up to 10 times as much dissolving power as root hairs aone to take up NPK and trace elements.

The really powerful combination for massive roots is to inoculate in the seed furrow with beneficial microbes plus a small amount of easily assimilated fertility. This gives your young corn or soybeans a richer array of beneficial microbes at the root, plus a surge of nutrients to multiply their growth in just a few days.

Corn yield contest winners all stress the need to build early, huge rooting structures. Once triggered, the “bloom” of mycorrhizal fungi and friendly soil organisms multiply many times over.

Since we introduced this V2 spray application with WakeUP Spring in 2009, farmers who’ve sprayed corn at V2 — about “pop can high” — and then dug roots of sprayed corn for comparison three weeks later, have told us they see a clear-cut difference that carries through to higher yields.

Here’s the challenge: Spraying WakeUP Spring on corn at V2 often calls for a sprayer pass just when other rush jobs like planting beans hits. It’s a little too early for postmerge weed spraying on corn, which would be a good way to piggyback the WakeUP application. But farmers who manage to get it done see substantial benefits, especially in seasons when big roots are critical to carrying the corn crop through a dry July. (And the forecasters are tipping odds toward that probability.)

So, we’ve found that farmers who make the best use of V2 application of WakeUP Spring on corn are those who have their own sprayers, as compared to relying on custom application from the co-op. Many cooperatives try to avoid applying anything they don’t sell.

Tests on many farmers’ fields, and in test plots, show a corn yield benefit of 3 to 10 bu. per acre.  Even with $3 corn, that’s an excellent return on the $3.50 per acre for 5 ounces of WakeUP Spring.