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Coldwater, Michigan | OKAY John,
This isn't fair because we have been talking. AMTS mixes easy with 28% Nitrogen. Mixing Potassium Thio-Sulfate with 28% is not a no brainer. If they weather is cool a mix of 1 gallon of K-Thio Sulfate with 1 gallon of water makes it much easier to mix. We had issues with it mixing with 28% in Michigan beet country a few years ago with guys planting beets in March. Before going further, K-Thio Sulfate of any meaningful quantity should not be used in the seed furrow! Normally you should not mix KTS more than 1 gallon of KTS with 10 gallons of 28%, then sidedress beside the row at planting, or sideress later with normal sidedress equipment, and time. I personally would just as soon see at least 2 gallons of KTS beside the row. If you are in cold weather, or just want your KTS to mix easily with your 28%, cut the KYS with water 1 to 1, then using that mix in a 2 gallon mix you can get more than 1 gallon of the KTS into the 28%. You might be stretching your luck to get more than 1 1/2 Gallon of the KTS (3 gallon of the mix) into the 10 gallons of 28%.
Do not mix and leave in your planter anything you will not be using today. It will settle by morning, and you will get to clean your lines out in the morning. It is better to sort of flush the total mixture out of the planter by using straight 28% the last few rounds.
So, is it worth it to go to this much trouble. Understand I was using a test plot planter to do replicated strips. These would extend the length of the growers field, and the treatments changed every 4 rows. The same hybrid was used for the entire fertilizer plot, just the treatments changed. In our plots we were seeing tremendous differences in plant health (very visual) and it was giving us some nice yield kick as well. If the slides work please look at them. As you will see, we were doing well with the 6-24-6 combination compared to 10-34-0, with the dry program we killed the dry program. The program when compared to the 10-34-0 @ 15 gallons beside the row performed at about 7 BPA better, and when cost of fertilizer was compared@ $2.00 corn, we had a nice return. Compare that to the micro nutrient blend of dry fertilizer at around 13 BPA difference @ $2.00 corn. Big difference!
After 2 years of these type of results in drier weather (Yields were on sandier ground), one of my dealers tried KTS at 2 gallons mixed in 25 gallons of 28%. W/o the KTS he was using 23 gallons of 28% beside the planter row. When he included the KTS he used 21 gallons of 28% and 2 gallons of the KTS. He planted 12 rows, and 12 rows clear across a 40 acre field. At harvest he took 10 Replications and had a 9+ BPA increase. Considering how much bigger his plot area was than my plots, I was impressed. His certainly worked out to be a replicated plot (side-by-side).
Does it work better yield wise than 28% with ATS? I don't know. I never tested those 2 products against one another. At the time of the plots we weren't selling either one so why give the competition something to sell!
I hope I have done more than rattle your brain. If you are farming sandy ground, I would probably favor the KTS over the ATS. I have had people ask why I didn't try more KTS at planting. There was only so much time and we were testing a number of different products in these plots (snake oil). I think some of the benefit we were seeing was from a plant health standpoint. That is what I think gave us the kick without a lot of product. One field where we had it in a plot had bad leaf disease. All the treatments except the KTS was bad news from a disease standpoint. You could easily pickout the 4 rows of KTS in each replication. You didn't need to know it was the same treatment you just could tell it was the only 4 rows in each replication that was totally clean. Those are the kinds of screens that make plot work fun!
Attachments
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 make6-24-6bettergraphs[1].ppt (406KB - 454 downloads)
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Ammonium thio Sulfate vs. Potassium thio Sulfate
