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Coldwater, Michigan | Mike,
I would suspect that the old neighbor has been too close to NACHURS, AgroCulture Liquid, or someone like them. Having worked for Alpine, later NaChurs/Alpine, I can tell you that culture is out there. While the concept may work that way for a period of time, and work well, the time will come when the soil test levels will decline significantly. Used to say that 3 gallons ( about 33#) of 0-0-30 liquid was the same as 100# of 0-0-60. The response may be the same initially. Yields may not suffer initially in that decline but eventually it catches up with you, then it is expensive to climb out of your hole. Not saying you can't do it for a while, just be careful how long of while you are looking at.
Many of the soil samples I am looking at have "P" readings of 7-8 times the maximum considered to be able to raise effectively 95% of your fields yield potential for corn. Most of us don't raise more than 30-50% of our fields yield capacity. What sense does it make to have a reading that would effectively be 15 times higher than it needs to be? If that soil is that high what is wrong with pulling some of that out of the soil to help the balance over time? Maybe not pull it down to the magic "maximum" but at least pull it down till it gets closer to that magic number. If you are raising specialty crops then the maximum can be justified to be higher if it is justified.
There is more to raising top yields than just pouring the fertilizer to it. Last years National No Till Conference was excellent for a number of reasons, among them was some excellent soils people. Didn't necessarily agree with everything they had to say, but it was still an excellent conference for those reasons alone. This year we are having more excellent soils people, among them will be Ray Ward of Ward's Soil Testing Laboratory. Ray is a top notch specialist and understands no till and the use of liquid fertilizers very well. Some Agronomists from some of the other labs haven't been in the field for several years. | |
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fertilizer question
