With the planting period fast approaching for this year, it's probably time to begin thinking about planting and fertilizer practices. Now days, many producers and most planting equipment dealers appreciate that in areas of relatively low growing season rainfall, like most of Montana east of the Continental Divide, surface broadcasting of fertilizer in conservation tillage systems is far less efficient than banding, either in one operation with seeding or in a separate application. Placing fertilizer in deep bands below the seeding depth and near the seed row has many potential advantages over surface broadcasting for cereal grain production. Later, the crown roots grow from the base of the crown, beginning about the 4-leaf stage when tillers begin to form.
Wheat commonly has three to six individual seminal roots.
Both genetic and environmental factors influence the actual number of seminal roots. Plants developing form poor seed or in a poor seedbed often are missing some seminal roots. Seminal roots and their lateral branches are the structures that absorb fertilizer nutrients, if the seedling is making use of nutrients before tillering. The crown root system does not being to develop until the main stem of the plant has four leaves and one tiller becomes visible from the axil of the first leaf. Each tiller produces crown roots after it has about three leaves.