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| I Banded fertilizer for many years when i started farming. I thought i could save money by appling fertilizer to the corn just where I needed it. I did lots of soil tests. I thought at first i was saving money and i probably was---for a while. I thought I was cheating the system. My soil test levels started dropping, my bean yields were not where i wanted them, I started seeing defieciencies in the plants.
I kept banding corn and broadcast spread corn stalks going to beans and my soil tests started to inch back up and my yields seemed to be better.
I started to use removal rate application amounts and I still believe those recs are pretty close. However now we are growing 200 bu plus corn and seeing the rates drop again. I now have manure to apply to those fields and now I am on a rotation of every other year on some farms and will be every 4 years on far away farms. The yields really climb when manure is applied.
As far as spoon feeding N, I don't see how multiple applications of 28% can be effiecient at all. Even sidedress of Nh3 doesn't look good here unless they did it early June. Anything done late June is a disaster. We haven't had any rain since mid june.
I will continue to use fall NH3 as the cost per unit is cheaper than the alternatives.
Spring applied N delays planting ,is more expensive per LB, and sidedressing is a pain in my book. I will only do it as a last resort. 28% is just way to high priced in my book compared to NH3 | |
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Amount of Early applied N needed?
