We have several customers going to a large scale split fertilizer application system with fall P & K + some micros applied as a dry product with minimal soil disturbance followed by a spring strip till pass just ahead of the planter applying 1/3 of N requirements plus a bit of P, planting with nothing on the planter but seed, followed by 2/3 of N applied as side dress.

This is all done with one 60 ft toolbar system plus one 60 ft planter, modest hp tractor and RTK.  There is typically no other tillage.

This system should provide very high fertilizer efficiency/reduced fertilizer expenses, timely planting, reduced equipment inventory and overall flexibility. The dry P & K could be done in the spring early preplant some years if not done in the fall.

There are lots of different ways the system can be adapted to changing conditions and crop rotations. There is corn into wheat, corn into beans, corn into corn and 30" beans into corn with a cover crop. One of these customers will be working into tillage radishes.

I helped a customer start up one of these systems today. They are using a 24 outlet Montag dry cart behind a JD/Bauer 60 ft toolbar with our Dawn 6000 coulters for fall. We had the row cleaners on the 6000's up high to start. 

There was some concern about getting the dry fertilizer at the bottom of a 4" to 6" deep slot and not blowing it out so this customer setup a very nice dry tube system with diffusers to let the air out before the bottom of the tube. It worked VERY well.

The Montag system gave very uniform output across all 24 rows in an initial test, even the outside ends. The fertilizer appeared to be all at the very bottom of the slot, except where we slowed down to stop for a picture!

This customer wanted to use a modest hp Case tractor pulling this 24 row + 12 ton fertilizer cart. He mounted a separate engine up on the tongue of the Bauer toolbar to power the air cart fan. That seemed to work well also.  

We started up on some bean stubble in a field that had been recently tiled and was rough in spots and rocky.

This looks like a very efficient, moderate cost and flexible system for some areas. This area is very rocky which is one reason to go to all coulters in addition to lower HP requirements.

These folks had been mostly no-till but were looking to improve fertilizer placement and efficiency and to get a bit of a black strip to plant into especially in high yielding corn stubble.

Here are some pictures from today. Using RTK the intent is to come back in the spring right over the top of this dry fertilizer with the Pluribus units mounted to this same toolbar. Then the planter maybe a couple hours to a couple weeks following depending on the weather etc. Basically be able to deal with whatever Mother Nature and the weather dish out in the spring.

But once the planter starts rolling it just keeps going with seed only planting at a reasona ble speed into double fertilized strips.

Jim at Dawn

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