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Wheatley, Arkansas | I'm considering planting corn on some ground with a ph in the 7.9 to 8.1 range. The soil fertility levels were very low last year, fertilizing on a 'build' program last year brought in 1100# cotton, with the same fertilizing program this year and the high ph levels, what can I expect furrow irrigated corn to yield? Are there major concerns with the high ph? Low fertility? Can any issues be resolved to make a good corn crop? Any thoughts or info deeply appreciated.
Concerned,
Les |
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Beresford SD | We have bottom ground and hilly eroded ground with ph's similar to what you talking about. No problem raising corn but I would recommend banding Phosphorus to minimize the tie up in these levels. |
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Little River, TX | If you know how much free lime your soil has, the rule of thumb is add 10 lbs of phosphate for each percentage of free lime.
Deep banding is a viable option to slow the change to a calcium phosphate.
There is also a polymer to protect phosphate from being joined to a cation.
From what my row crop neighbors tell me, much depends on the variety choice. They are of the opinion most corn varieties are designed for the Corn Belt and we here are hard put to get a well adapted corn variety. |
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| Our PH is similar to yours. I have good luck with 4 tons of turkey manure per acre. If it is available to you? Jim J |
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Martinsville, Ohio | Phosphorous WITH Zinc, you can melt zinc sulphate right into your 10-34-0 if you are using it for a cheap solution.
Get a good soil test, take the labs recommendations and apply what they recommend in a balance they recommend and you can afford, even if it is half of what they recommend.
Ed |
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| Have some ground 7.6 - 7.8 continuos corn since sometime in the 1960s. It is very high in P from livestock manure but still had problems with P difficency. Sulfur seems to help, tried ammonium sulfate - expensive, and gypsum, both seemed to work. |
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Little River, TX | Another way to buffer phosphate from being tied up by the cations is to apply it with anhydrous.
As for deep banding, there is some information that tells us deep banding on 20, 30, or 40 inch centers will outperform spread phosphate, enough so to more than pay for the higher cost $/P of 10-34-0.
I put 11-37-0 down the same slot anhydrous is injected. |
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Martinsville, Ohio | What is the analysis of the turkey manure if you care to share? Is the pH low enough to buffer your high pH? Must be. Sure wish I had some local, I have low P soils and sure could use it. Ed |
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Arva, Ontario | Les,
Most of our ground is in the pH 7.6-8.0 range. In our case, it is nice dirt, but Phosphorus management is a pain. These pH's will soak up broadcast phosphorus 'til the cows come home, so manure is a great way to get it on perhaps sequestered in the organic form, where it might become available before the soil gets ahold of it. I don't recall seeing alot of dairy barns or feedlots in your neighbourhood, so it boils down to this...
Band your phosphorus requirements on every year, especially the crops that could use most of their P with a small root system. Corn falls into this category, and up here winter wheat is very responsive to banded P in the cool soils in the fall. I cannot speak intelligently to cotton (although intuitively the vigor makes me think it would help), but soybeans will likely be the least responsive to applied P, although they are large users of it.
With our pH's, I've never bought a pound of lime, but watching P go on with minimal impact on the soil test is our albatross.
Luke aka KenSWOnt |
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East Central, Nebraska | I also have some corn on soil that has a ph of 8.1, the people that took the soil samples said to spread gypsum but i wasn't sure if they were selling their product or that is what i needed. I don't have turkey manure available in my area. All your input helps alot. Thank you |
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Beresford SD | are you saying the zinc is beneficial to help prevent P tie up in my high ph soils? Is that based on personal experience or is there data to that effect? |
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Wheatley, Arkansas | We have 2 X 2 starter coulters for our planter, it's a PITA to mess with, but if it means more yield and efficient use of fertilize inputs we can put them on and apply banded liquid fertilizer. Any and all suggestions and advice deeply appreciated.
LES |
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| Ed, that varies with each batch. 4 ton is the max allowed in MN. The reason being is that the 4 ton level of turkey manure reaches the max allowable phosphorous per acre. At the 4 ton level N and potash are still within the allowable limits. Jim J |
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Little River, TX | He may be saying the phosphate will tie up your zinc and if you will be putting on much phosphate it might help to put on some zinc at the same time.
There are a number of things you can do to slow Phosphate tie up in the soil. |
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Martinsville, Ohio | You probably have high Mag too? The Ca in gypsum will knock off some Mag ions, the Sulfur is needed in almost every soil and tissue test I take and gypsum is a great soil conditioner in any soil.
We use it if we can get a cheap source of it but most of it is made in to sheet rock or drywall which is in high demand in these parts.
I don't know if I would use it at $30 per ton here but if you can get closer to $10 I think you will get a good benefit from it.
The thumbrule is 35 lbs of gypsum per inch of rainfall so that figures about 1200 lbs or more per acre here while half that much would be sufficient where it rains half that much in South Dakota for example.
Ed |
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Little River, TX | If your pH is high because you have a calcareous soil with lots of free lime, adding more calcium will do nothing for you. It is difficult to massage down a pH when the soil test has tons/A of calcium, In that case tons of sulfur may work, but usually that is temporarily. I can drive down for my 8 pH to a 6.x range with 1,000 to 2,000 lbs of anhydrous, for a few months. My soil has literally tons of free lime per acre,
One thing to watch is the extractant the lab is using. With your pH's insist they use the Olsen chemistry, (Sodium Bicarbonate) Bray or Mehlich will not accurately indicate your phosphate needs.
The good thing is the tied up by calcium phosphate can eventually become available. This is telling us there is phosphate there that a soil test will not find. They are designed to tell us how much phosphate is readily available not what the total phosphate level is. Soil testing is a qualitative analysis not a quantitative analysis. |
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Little River, TX | Obviously gypsum works in the Eastern Midwest soils. There has been a lot of work that document it.
In the big picture Ca++ and Mg++ have the same ionic charge so in this are roughly equally attracted to clay & organic matter.
The Mg atom is smaller than the calcium atom so is held tighter to the clay than the calcium.
The kicker is the soil will be in equilibrium and the Mg atoms can not hog all the sites. To kick off the Mg atoms a large surplus of Ca must flood the system.
A also run effect is K+ can and will be kicked off the clay particles, and will be kicked off before the smaller Mg atoms.
Obviously gypsum works as advertised in Ohio and Indiana. Does it apply in Arkansas? I do not know. I do know the gypsum addition to my calcareous soil with it's excessively high Ca levels and moderate Mg levels is considered to be counter productive. (Ca/Mg <10/1) ( a conservative <5,000 ppm Ca and roughly 300 ppm Mg)
I suspect, and this is wild supposition, where gypsum works is on land that requires lime to maintain pH. Where elemental sulfur will adversely effect the pH, while gypsum has a neutral effect on pH. The idea is to form sodium sulfate to on sodic soils and magnesium sulfate for high Mg soil. Most crops remove far more calcium than they do Magnesium, so after generations of applying lime that also contains magnesium, the Mg levels become excessive.
Remember anhydrous NH4+ can also displace Mg, as well as Ca, Na, and K, if you flood the system. A number of years back I had a Professor in Indiana insist I need gypsum to flush out excessive Mg. Problem was and is I have an excess of calcium, and a modest amount of Mg. My tissue test and hay testing tell me our hay has close to double the usual level of Ca and is reasonably close to the desired Mg level. Hopefully Ontario Keith will chime in. He has a very good understanding of this whole subject. Martin as well as fertilizerguy also have a better understanding of the subject than I. |
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Martinsville, Ohio | Hay, what is your calcium saturation at 50 inches if you can get roots that deep and with alfalfa I am sure you can?
I am sure you have told me but what is the most accurate base saturation of your soils at different depths?
Gypsum won't increase pH. It is neutral. 7.0 pH hopefully, not a liming agent. Magnesium will. 2 times as much as calcium. The sulfur buffers the Ca in gypsum.
I think timing and weather has more impact on your(our soils) as much as anything and we are all trying to maximize the nutrient flow in our soil that our crop will respond to.
Ed
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Little River, TX | All my crop land is bottom land with 25 feet to gravel or a sand stone rock. It has visible lime particles as deep as you want to go.
When I pull the next series of soil samples I will use the MidWest S 2 that includes sodium and free lime.
On the upland soils here they are a few inches to 10 feet of soil, sometimes a A and B strata and then caliche rock. Where there has been erosion the soil is white not black and the caliche is very close to the surface.
I am not sure what my percentage of free lime is, yet. Using the equation for computed CEC but with Ca as the unknown I have computed as high as 30% free lime. I would think that the computed Ca level would have additative errors from all the variability potential with K, Mg, & Na. My guess would be in the 15% free lime range. If my 71 lbs of phosphate will effect the Olsen soil test 1 ppm P then it would be in the 8% to 10% range. I will have a better feel for my free lime percentage in June. |
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Corn on high ph soil?????????
