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Coldwater, Michigan | Man after some of the good comments that were made, I hate to bring this to a close. Can I just leave it at you can believe what you want? That way I won't have to fess up what was really going on?
I really liked the idea that the chaff spreader was the culprit. In fact under the correct conditions I have seen something along those lines where "classic herbicide" was sprayed on the beans, chaff not spread well, and the wheat suffered right behind the combine. So, yes, I liked that answer. However, in this case it isn't the correct answer!
The Urea topic currently going is related to it. Urea is much lighter then most other dry fertilizer material. Prilled Urea is worse than granulated Urea in that it is a softer particle, and therefore crushes easier, producing more fines. The more fines you try to throw out the back of that spreader the worse the problem becomes. Because of this light weight a spreader that is rated at a 40 foot spread pattern by it's manufacturer ( in fine print "average weight of 60-65#/cubic foot) will spread decently at a whole lot less width, maybe only 25-30 feet depending on the actual weight of the material. Put your pans out and the pattern is screwy just a short distance out.
When I was running the fertilzer plant we double spread all wheat. Cut the rate in half and spread at half the distance with a spinner spreader. That's one easy solution to this common problem. Another is to have an air spreader apply your urea. Or you could use liquid nitrogen to solve the problem.
In a year when we would have more moisture than we did this year, it wouldn't have been as noticable for as long as it was this year. The moisture would have spread the nitrogen out a bit. It would have still been there, just not as bad. It would have been interesting to have pulled yield checks on the strips, because there was very little heading in the yellow areas. Decent wheat for the area in the green areas, nothing in affect in the yellow areas.
Assuming the high rate of N was appropriate to not knocking the wheat down normally, He could have upped his normal rate/acre with double spreading and have had much better wheat overall. It is a common issue, and I can tell most fields that have had a spinner on them just by driving by on the road. In this case it would have probably paid a good dividend to have hired 28% sprayed on the crop rather than having spread it himself.
This was just my "Precision Ag" speal for the day! Thanks for taking the time to read and share with the rest of us. I still like the chaff idea, because there are alot of people missing something on that. As a kid, we would have been told to shut up about it, because what would a kid know about such things. The scarey part is we aren't kids anymore!
Have a good evening!
Edited by Bill Moyer 8/1/2007 22:11
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Quiz concerning wheat
