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Mass confusion on Ph, soil tests and fertility
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easymoney
Posted 11/19/2025 06:03 (#11439500 - in reply to #11439382)
Subject: RE: Mass confusion on Ph, soil tests and fertility


ecmn		I used to be the biggest advocate for fungicide on soybeans, whatever the co-op tells you for fertility you do it, seed treatment. How could you farm without it. Our soils normally require a regular liming.

20 years ago I'd hear these alternative people say these outlandish things. And I would scoff, I would say things like you don't know my soil, take the things that they had said back to the local co-op and the local sales " agronomist" would explain why they're wrong.

11 years ago I started an experimental field. I was going to do it. How these soil scientist people said it should be done.

It was corn soybean rotation no-till or strip till. Very very little phosphorus and potassium were applied. No more fungicide or insecticide unless it's needed, no more seed treatment, cover crops were used. there was 3 years in there of corn on corn, a year of hay production, and then 3 years of rotational grazing.

The first year we did a grid sample, and then at year 9 nine we did the good sample again. P1 Bray actually slightly higher. pH stayed the same. Potassium dropped.

We sampled again after a couple years of rotational grazing and K made a pretty good increase. Everything else stayed the same.

That field was notorious for erosion and runoff. Them were the two biggest factors in starting this.

How did my phosphorus stay the same?
How did my pH stay the same?
How did the potassium levels come back up?

12 years later that field still has never had the need for fungicide insecticide, primary tillage, bulk fertilizer.

So that led me to do a lot more other experiments And research.

A geological survey of our soils just in the top couple feed tells us that there's thousands of years worth of mineral. Almost as if God designed it that way. Strange..

I was told foliar feeding doesn't work, micronutrients are a waste of money, liquid fertilizers are snake oil, there's no science behind plant testing that the data isn't that good.

I started doing plant tests and learning how to build a foliar program. Saw some very significant responses in trials.

learned how micronutrients affect our macronutrients and again with the plant testing by fixing some of them little things the big things come along better.

Learn how soil and plants move nutrients from soil particles to plants and started mimicking that.

I have come along far enough that for the rest of my life on these fields I will never have to buy DAP fertilizer. I buy a high quality liquid. A couple gallons are meeting my crop demands.

With the soil testing and plant testing i apply 50 lb. Of potassium chloride and a couple gallons of acetate is meeting my crop demands.

Getting a little more efficient with nitrogen every year. But there is the reality that we have low organic matter. Glacial washout soils to be very efficient in the soils and environment is difficult. But I have came a long ways from where I used to be and what the industry tells us.

We don't know what we don't measure. If you're not pulling something of a soil test every year and a couple plant tests, how do you know what's happening? How do you know that you need what they're selling you?

We have scientific data shown. If you have a deficiency on your soil test, applying that deficiency will give a crop response.

Soil testing itself is far from precise. It uses chemicals when our soil is a biological.

The number you get back is more of an estimate

What is their margin of error? 10% 30% more?

The soil is not not homogenized it is heterogeneous. When you homogenize fertilizer that means every pill has the same components as the next prill. Our soil isn't that way.

There is no empirical data to backup crop removal rate fertility program.

There is zero data of any correlation between applying crop removal rate fertilizer and a yield response

There is no study showing that if you take a pound you have to replace a pound.

The removal rate in its own titling is a theory and it's based on averages not science law.

Removal rate theory assumes that soil is inert.

Look at the era of Agriculture and what was science at the time compared to today when the removal rate theory came about.

And a lot of our bulk fertilizers that we're applied to maintain our soils are very poor quality, very low efficiency in plant uptake.


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