Centre county Pennsylvania, USA | Ground is different here but we use same crop removal rate fertilizer application policy. Our farms have no flat fields and each has dozens of soil types that are not aligned for any type of griding. Attached screen snap shows soil map for one of our typical rented farms, notice degree of slope and size/shape of soil types on that farm. We haven't had much bottom line success using soil tests based on any type of soil test grid patterns on those farms. We have noticed that yield maps do not correlate with soil type maps on our farms. That non correlation seems to show that either yield maps or soil maps, or both, are not good basis for fertilizer application on our farms. We are currently using fixed rate (not VRT) fertilizer application for each field based on last year's average crop removal rate for that field. Random soil tests and average yields show that soil test levels are being maintained with that fertilizer application policy. That seems to work for us because soil moisture is nearly always the yield limiter here, not soil fertility.
 (Soil Map, Shafer farm.jpg)
Attachments
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 Soil Map, Shafer farm.jpg (92KB - 73 downloads)
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grid sampleing
