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Coldwater, Michigan | Matt,
No offense taken, even if you had meant it! I'm getting harder for someone to offend all the time. I have better things to do with my life!
Some of your comments are addressing an issue I had with one of my sales managers a few years back: I published one of these starter trials, after joining the US group, and he came unglued because I published one of them where we lost the plot. He comment was "Why would you even publish something like this"? Of course, the simple answer to that is "Because it happened".
The information provided in the original post, it should be pointed out: The 6-24-6 did not win all those trials. This is merely an average, after testing the products a number of times in different locations, over several years. It will not always win the plot, but has a very good probability of it.
As to why the wins, Matt. First of all, 10-34-0 is a lot safer product in contact with the seed, than many of us thought. So we are not talking a safety issue. In fact if you look back in my history on these archives you will see reference to us using 6-24-6, and 10-34-0, on sand ground along with some of the other low salt, seed placed materials at rates as high as 15 gallons/acre on the seed. The 10-34-0 was among the safer products out there that spring. We did have a good amount of moisture soon after planting, but some of the other treatments were suffering @ 4 gallons, and dead @ 8 gallons. 10-34-0 still looked good @ 15 gallons, but had affected stand. The 6-24-6 maybe had 2000 plants more at the 15 gallon rate. You couldn't find stand difference at 8 gallons. This is not to say however, that I haven't seen 10-34-0 burn a crop. Just not as readily as I have seen some of the "Low Salt" materials such as 9-18-9, and 8-19-3, burn a crop.
So if not a noticeble stand difference at a sane application rate, then what? The KOH is possibly some of the advantage, but when I added more KOH to the seed placed mix, I often reduced yield. Say that you mixed 4 gallons of 6-24-6 with a gallon of 0-0-30, then applied it to the seed furrow. Some might help, more doesn't necessarily. Same thing happened with Zinc EDTA rates. Add some, yield went up; add more, yield went down.
I was fortunate when I went to work with Alpine Plant Foods - Canada. They provided me with a plot planter, and some advise on laying out plots. Encouraged me to look at different treatments, and to find different "snake oils", and wonder products to add to the mix, to see if we could improve yield. Some of those products did a great job, but no body could have afforded to use them for Corn, beans, and wheat as we were looking at the then current pricing. We tried different micro treatments, different analysis products. Tried changing our own as the statement about KOH should indicate. Many times when messing with our products in combination with some of these "Snake Oils" we would plug the manifolds on the planter, and literally dig out material that looked like "baby poop".
As you can see the numbers I was reporting were only the products we commonly see. There were many experimental products tried and rejected that there was no reason to report in my original summaries. I can also tell you that when we trimmed the goodies a bit in the 6-24-6, we usually lost yield.
It was thru this experimenting that the LFB 6-24-6 product was born. When NaChurs and I parted ways (for those of you not aware: Alpine and NaChurs joined forces when I was moved to the US group), one of those treatments I found in the experiments, is now the base of the LFB Product.
What makes the yield difference, Matt? That's what I get paid for knowing.
My sales manager at NaChurs did not want to hear about it (same one mentioned above), it cost too much to produce.
Edited by Bill Moyer 9/28/2008 11:22
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Spending your Fertilizer Dollars
