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Mass confusion on Ph, soil tests and fertility
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SimpleJoe
Posted 11/20/2025 10:06 (#11440991 - in reply to #11440945)
Subject: RE: Mass confusion on Ph, soil tests and fertility


NW Illinois		As far as stratification, my view is, it's constant here and we don't till to change it here. We raise great crops here even with it present. For this thread it was more about the perspective of how altering testing depths can alter test values coming from the lab.

Is there fertility here below 6", of course. What you do with the info if you test deeper, I'm not sure. Below 12" is it usable for soybeans roots in any volume? Do nutrients rise in soils? That would contradictory to science that says our macronutrients are always going down and out the tile lines head to the Gulf.

I soil test, I produce VR spread maps with FieldAlytics, I drive the application equipment. Have done all those in varying volumes at varying times in my retail journey. I'm tone deaf to it because all everybody cares about here is what a set of numbers is at a point in the field. If I typed pages of real life scenarios from the physical product issues and actual application issues that can alter what is the computer generated VR recs says it wants to happen versus reality, it makes it even more questionable if we are accomplishing much of anything.

I have customer fields today that have been on 2.5 grid sampling on 4 yr intervals since 1996 that still have "no spread needed areas" of high fertility through multiple testing sequences and other areas that today need 250# to the acre of P & K x 4 years to correct what a soil sample says. Over that timeframe the fields have had likely 5 different testing people, dozen different versions of application equipment with probably 4 different operators, 4 different software companies with 3 different people setting the software algorithms parameters and we still only care about "fixing" 6" worth of soil profile. I want something better, I want to do something better, but I usually just only get "the next shiny penny" when someone shows me their new proposed path.

Edited by SimpleJoe 11/20/2025 10:08
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