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ecmn | There’s no such thing as truly no salt.
But, you absolutely can build an in-furrow program, supported by foliar and side-dress feeding, that replaces a bulk dry P & K program and reduces the N you need to buy.
Russell Hendricks ran a fertilizer study showing that deep-banded, high-quality liquid at reduced rates outperformed both broadcast and banded dry fertilizer , even when the dry was applied at well above crop removal rates.
Products:
Nachurs/Alpine — very high-quality, acetate-based, low salt liquid
Growers Mineral Triple-10 — food-grade acetate and orthophosphate; one of the few products where the only limiting factor is budget, not plant safety
Conklin — high-quality, low-salt liquids
Maxx Systems LLC (MN) — strong support products: fulvic, humic, chelators, microbial stimulants
AMF (arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi) — critical biology that helps seedling root development and makes soil nutrients more available
To say someone “replaced their dry program,” you need to look at what their dry program was. You can build a pretty efficient dry plan — but it’s hard to find high-quality, low-salt dry products.
If you’re broadcasting dry NPK, we know it’s an inefficient system:
It’s soluble for a short window, but not necessarily plant-available
What’s soluble is also what’s at risk of leaching or runoff
After that window, it binds to the soil, just like the P and K already “banked” in the ground
This is just basic math:
Broadcast 100 lbs of phosphorus, and your best-case uptake is maybe 20 lbs
9.5 gallons of 3-18-18 gets you the same 20 lbs — but in a form the plant actually uses
Personally, I wouldn’t put 10 gallons in-furrow. I stick with a couple gallons in-furrow, and then run the bulk of my liquid through strip-till banding, foliar, or side-dress.
Now, some guys will say, “The unused P and K go into the soil bank.”
Sure, but why would I bank with an 80–90% loss rate?
What’s left doesn’t just sit there waiting , it gets bound up, just like the old legacy P & K already in the soil.
If you have to apply P to maintain your P1 levels, your soil isn’t functioning well.
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No salt 3-18-18.
