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ecmn | Yep it sounds funny. It sounds stupid. It sounds like snake oil. Them were my thoughts when I first heard that stuff as well years ago.
But to start with that jug is not competing against 100 lb of fertilizer. you're getting 25 to 60 lb of actual nutrients depending on the fertilizer. and then 60% to 80% of it won't even be utilized this year.
So realistically that jug is only competing against the 5 to 15 lb of fertilizer that actually gets utilized.
Once we start testing in season we can see real fast if our current system is over applying, A lot of times we don't give mineralization enough credit. Maybe our sweet spot is not the full recommended rate and maybe it's not a zero, but maybe it's somewhere in between.
If we look at product use efficiency and nutrient uptake charts of the plants, you can see where a low rate of a product giving you 80 to 90% uptake efficiency placed at the right time can outperform a 50-100 application at 10 to 30% efficiency use put on at the wrong time.
A lot of these products aren’t just “3 lbs of fertilizer in a jug.” Many of them carry biology, enzymes, or organic acids, basically a miniature biological system. The value isn’t the pounds in the jug, it’s that the biology can free up and make available what the plant actually needs from the soil. Most soils already hold far more P and K than the crop will ever remove. A good biological product doesn’t supply the pounds it unlocks them.
It's not snake oil. It's not magic. It's not marketing. If it's a legitimate product, it's science. | |
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How a 12 lb jug of fertilizer can actually replace 100 lb
