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Southeast WI | Haven't we learned yet? Easymoney keeps beating it into our heads that there's huge pools of P and K in our soils just waiting to be liberated. No such thing as mined out soil and you're using the wrong soil tests it appears.
Well anyway I get what you are dealing with. You were farming in the 80' - me too helping dad on his farm and rented my first ground in '90 before I graduated college. I know what mined, ****ty ground is like since that is all that is usually available to a young farmer. You've live through rough times and the '90-2004 time frame sucked so you KNOW a calculator has to be ignored if you can cut enough to get close to break even and then dollars filter in from the govt to keep you in the game another year. This year is no different so you ARE going to farm this ground you speak of.
A long retired UW professor said decades ago that you can fix a lot of mined out ground by applying "fresh" fertilizer every year. That means apply what the crop is going to remove on average. If at all possible use 2×2 starter to help early on with that time frame where deficient soils are really a problem with plant growth. You will see some nutrient deficiency in the lowest testing areas during extended dry periods but overall this does work. Ive used it on a lot of my own ground over the years, plenty of acres for my consulting clients and we've stopped the mining, raise solid crops and slowly build soils test levels over the past few decades. Bottom line - put out removal rates on this type of ground yearly! There isn't a short cut. Times will get better and you need land to farm.
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