Luke,

When I go the field I hear folks swearing by both directions - some want P&K "deep" some want it "shallow". Even the definitions of "deep" and "shallow" vary enormously.

Some folks want deep to be at the bottom of a 12"-14" deep ripper shank, others think "deep" is 6" as pictured above. 

I am an engineer, not an agronomist, and sometimes that is an advantage. Joe's University of Iowa training is as a physicist... We just try to give you who are agronomists the tools do do whatever it is you want to do.

The very thoughtful customers pictured above however have a very interesting approach. They were applying only about 200 lb/a of dry mostly P & K mix in the photos above and want this 6" deep and banded pretty precisely. We were very pleased to see the fertilizer appeared to be right at the bottom of the 6" slot. I think the diffusers helped this a lot.

They are coming back in the spring however with the Pluribus units on this same 24 row toolbar and place more dry P & K  shallower and worked into the root-ball sized Pluribus strip along with banding 1/3 of their N as liquid I believe at the same time. They may be using dry urea or a urea/ams blend as the 1/3 I am not sure. AMS is being talked about a lot as these soils often respond to some added S. That is a benefit of a dry cart such as the Montag. You can get about anything you want nicely blended and apply it as dry uniformly from row to row.

In the video link above in response to Tom's question this customer has been very successful applying all of his P & K in the Pluribus' "shallow" strip in the spring along with about 1/3 of his N as urea. His P & K are all pretty evenly distributed from 0 to maybe 4" deep and 8" wide. This allows him to apply less than the soil test recommends. (apologies M) This customer in the video side dresses the balance 2/3 N as nh3 on 60" centers....

The 6000 is really doing a good job as an nh3 side dresser as you can see here.

So that is the beauty of this one toolbar/60ft/Montag/6000/Pluribus system - you can do about anything/any product/any time you wish.

I certainly don't want to argue fertilizer placement issues with Paul Jasa or you. We just provide a variety of flexible tools to do about anything you want to do. Not quite complete yet but we are getting there thanks in large part to our customers.

Jim at Dawn