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| You're farming how the university that gets donations from corporate ag has taught you to farm. My brother and I are both engineers, mechanical and ag respectfully. We use to farm like you, in 2012 we were all in on grid sampling and dumping fertilizer to raise those p&k levels. After 4 years we realized that we had spent a lot of money but hadn't moved the needle much on soil nutrient levels. We also noticed that high or "good" P1 or K levels did not correlate to high or good yields on our farm. The fall of 2018 we grid sampled again 4 years after another "build" application, still the needle hadn't moved much in most of the targeted areas so we threw in the towel on the grid and build. Previously starting around 2015 we had dabbled a little bit on cover crops, and had started to expand that slowly but terminating at an early stage. Now that we were done with the build the nutrients with synthetic fertilizer we went all in on soil health. We have reduced our P&K application to about 1/2 of the university recommended removal rates and intend to keep cutting if the data we collect suggest we are not "mining" our soil. Here is a screenshot of some numbers we are tracking on our farm. These are average values from 2.5 ac grids on 2 of our farms. Our yields have been top notch for our area and our P&K levels have maintained or increased. In this time period our average corn yields have been 200+ and avg bean yields have been 55+. Thinking outside the box and ignoring university recommendations have been extremely profitable for us. I'm only sharing this data with you to maybe help you in someway.
Edit add: In that time period we have always limed our farms and continue to do so.
Edited by ks_cover_crop 12/4/2024 10:30
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Raising K levels
