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Northeast, Nebraska | .6 lbs of N per bushel is very easily attainable. I have been doing that for a few years now. I too have seen my nutrient levels increase while putting on way less p and k as before too. A lot of that goes with increasing my biology levels in my fields. Soil DNA testing for biology should be just as important as doing your soil tests. Sap testing is better than tissue testing but I was in a meeting this last week where this was brought up. They said the sap testing will give you fore warning but a tissue test will show damage that is already done and by the time you can correct it, you already have a yield drag. They said to focus on the main place where your plants get their nutrients and that is the soil, plants can't get the fertilizer you put on if the biology isn't there to put it in plant available form. They had done testing and every time they put a chemical pass on, the biology population numbers went down. It depended on the conditions on how fast that biology recovered. There are guys that row place their fertility and are pulling tissue samples and are still coming up short on phosphorus in their plants. That's because the fertilizer is being applied in too high of concentrations in an area. It is too salty and the microbes are not liking it and can't break it down fast enough. The only exception is if you are using the ortho, like I said earlier which is plant available. It is better to spread your nutrients out more even through your field so there is more even feeding to the biology in the soil. The biggest one for phos is mycorrhiza. You would be amazed how many people I pull samples for are low on mycorrhiza. They are a fungus, the good kind, and they just aren't there. You want a as close to a 50/50 ratio of fungus to bacteria as you can get. Lots of them are 90% bacteria and 10% fungal. The thing people don't realize is the power of mycorrhiza is that once you build up that colony, they can get that fertility from between the rows. Just because you can't see them as easy as a root, doesn't mean they aren't there. Mycorrhiza also help to break up compaction and to help increase your water holding capacity of soil. I have actual data from soil moisture probes that were 100' apart in the field where I added some Mycorrhiza because of my farming practices, I have farmed a lot of them out. You can't just go throwing all different kinds of biologicals out there either. You have to make sure they play nice together and are actually something that the soil is missing. | |
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Liquid Fertilizer ?
