|
Little River, TX | Some notes from the school of hard knocks.
With alfalfa I try to keep at 35 ppm B or so. To do this I will combine one of the boron products with Potash. Usually put out a sack per 4 some times 2 acres. I normally am fertilizing 8 maybe 16 acres but tell the fertilizer company I am fertilizing 50 maybe 75 acres, other wise their headquarters gets up set about all that borax.
With liquid I use Solubor and mix it with 10-34-0 & water about half and half. Sometimes if the Zinc is low I will put out 5 to 10 lbs of zinc sulfate and that appears to do the job.
The first shortage of micronutrients I really noticed was copper. To get a quick response I used a chelated copper product foliar spray. Even foliar at labeled rates it was 2 years before I saw a yield response. For several alfalfa plantings I put out a half sack per acre of copper sulfate and during my summer fallow. That worked just fine.
At one time each field got Manganese during this preplant fertilization. Mn has been in the green from that time till now.
With our calcareous soils it is impossible to fertilize the ground with enough iron to make up a deficiency. Fortunately for me that has only bee yard fruit trees. If I were to try soybeans I would need a foliar iron treatment several times during the season.
The Pecan growers here find the same is true for zinc for "Improved Pecan Varieties". Natives do not have that problem. They mostly use a zinc nitrate product.
Look up the American Society of Agronomy, Soil Society of America for their listing of texts on fertility in general and your crops specifically, That can be some interesting reading. | |
|
I have a ? on Micros....boron and Zn
