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Fontanelle, IA | Thanks Thomas, Bruce, Sheldon, and Jon, for all the advice.
I guess that I probably should have described my situation a little more before posting. In my case, my soils are very low in both P and K; I "inherited" this from the previous renter who decided that dry carts/dry fertilizer weren't in his budgets over the years. I can't totally blame him because I didn't attempt to pull a soil sample before I put my bid to buy the farm from the absentee landowner. My fault!
I've been running a stought dry program of about 36-80-80 since I bought this farm. Based upon earlier posts and responses from Ed and Soil Consult, my soil has basically ran out of gas. With my dry program, I feel as though I'm walking and carrying an empty gas can right now with a few more miles to go before I get to the station to fill it up.... I'm looking at using the starter to give me/soil some energy to get things started and working again. Starter is definitely an expensive route; however, most of the research that I've seen has said that in depleted soils such as mine I'll have a higher probability of a yield response with the starter. In addition, I figured that my notill corn-on-corn (mandated by SCS soil plans until I can get my strip-till machine) would respond even more because of the colder temps, slower microbial activity/chemical reactions, and P2O5 and K2O mineralization processes that Dr. Gruver posted links to about a week ago. Again, thanks for all the advice! Much, Much Appreciated! Bart | |
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Pop-Fertilizer Placement
