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lawfarms

Posted 3/8/2014 11:45 (#3741226 - in reply to #3741079)
Subject: Corrections ad clearification

King City, Mo

Hey, Just wanted to clear a few things up for everyone. I was quoted in the March 2014 issue of The Furrow and the guy that called me did not clearly understand what I explained to him.

First off...

The answer to higher soybean yields is not applications of nitrogen. Growers need to figure out what the limiting factor for yield for them is and build a program from their. A variety of things can hinder yield like poor drainage, lack of adequate rain fall, nutrient deficiency and weed pressure. Their is no magic bullet or wonder in a jug that will fix everyone's problems and give them a profitable yield boost on every field every year.

Soil tests and plant analysis pulled on fields has helped me determine what I needed to do on my farm. Liebig's law of the minimum with the barrell gives a great visual of what I'm trying to do on the nutrient side. We can only yield as much as our limiting factor.

Ams is ammonia sulfate (21-0-0-24s) not ammonium thiosulfate.

My use of ammonia sulfate is to feed the soil microbes so they can decompose the previous crops stover. Weather it is corn stocks, wheat straw or whatever. This will then in turn balance the carbon to nitrogen ratio of the crop stover so that the nutrients in the stover are made available to the following crop.

The sulfur part of AMS is to help lower magnesium levels as they are higher then I would like them to be in my soil. Sulfur bonds with magnesium to form Epson salts and leaches away. Magnesium is part of the cation exchange and by lowering the percent occupied by magnesium it will make more room for potassium in the soil. The molecule of magnesium is smaller then that of potassium or calcium so by balancing the cation exchange it will help increase water infiltration and nutrient uptake.

The use of cover crops to increase yield -

The rye -- Their is mass confusion in the ag community with the types of rye as their is rye grass, annual rye grass and cereal rye. I am using cereal rye in my cover crop blend after winter wheat. Cereal rye is a lot like wheat but grows several feet tall in the spring. Having a grass growing in the spring when we receive some strong rains will keep the soil on my farm vrs washing away. I have soil tested soil that I dug out of a silted in pond next to my and my neighbors field and it was prime soil.

Having the cereal rye growing helps improve my soil tilth by putting more roots in the soil and it increases water infiltration. Soybean roots will follow the path of least resistance so having deep cereal rye roots to follow should let me soybeans root deeper quicker to take advantage of more of the soil profile for nutrient and water uptake.

The cereal rye puts off an allelopathic effect after it is terminated. The decaying cereal rye stover should help prevent small seeded weeds like tall waterhemp from emerging and also provides a thick mat on the soil surface to help retain soil moisture. As the cereal rye stover is decomposed later in the season by the soil microbes nutrients are released in a plant available forms for the soybean crop to uptake.

I'm also planting radishes, turnips and a legume in with the cereal rye this year. The legume will produce nitrogen for its self as well as for the cereal rye via Arbuscular Mycorrhizae Fungi associations. The radishes will help break up compaction in the soil, and scavenge nutrients to release as they decompose.

As for precision application our crop roots grow across all of the soil to gather nutrients and water. I fertilize via dry broadcast application on a properly set fertilizer cart. Dry fertilizers provide the most pounds of nutrient per dollar applied. There is about 2 million pounds of soil in 6" of an acre so adjusting the amount of a nutrient in the soil for long term fertility takes tonnage.

For better yields we all need to evaluate what our weakest link is on our fields. It may be drainage, lack of rain fall or soil fertility. Once we have an idea of what is lacking we can invest money to improve our yields where it needs it.

Edited by lawfarms 3/8/2014 12:05