Liquid or Dry?

[James Kelly]

Ok about to reoutfit my John Deere 7000 planter to put out some starting fertilizer, I have sandy loam soils, so Im concern with leching and leaning towards dry... What do you think?

[Ben Pearson]

As Anthony said banding your fertilizer with the seed you can burn the seed and it won't grow if you exceed 10 lbs actual N, I need to do some checking on if its the same with 2x2.  Also you might not be able to put down enough fertilizer with a dry unit to avoid filling up all the time.  What I mean is that 11-52-0 or 18-46-0 will be very low in N but high in P2O5.  If you tried using those fertilizers for your N recommendation you will be overloading your soil with Phosphorous.  Putting down urea you might be refilling every round or so.  Banding your phosphorous fertilizers both liquid or dry increase efficiency greatly.  Phosphorous doesn't move but maybe a single mm a year.  Your fine root hairs need to be within 2 mm to absorb the phosphorous.  The absorbtion is greatly increased when you band a liquid or dry.  Your N will move on sandy loams no matter what.  You spit it will move a foot.  You are on the right track to split apply your fertilizers.

[James Kelly]

ahhhh I see what you mean about the phosphorous and I deff don't want to over load P or even pay for all of that when it is not going to be utilized! So basically I have to find a prodcut that is much heavier in the N than the P and K and if I want band the P and K I need liquid products for them. The dry fertilize boxes I am going to add will have about 500 lbs capicity i believe, but like I said earlier I don't want a whole lot of N in the ground when planting, because I am side dressing with liquid later on in the season.  and with my cat exchange, at the moment I am shooting to apply 30 or 40 lbs with the dry. 

[ncgrainsNshootn]

pros & cons to both for sure. if cost of both products are relatively equal, then liquid will be a better route from a agronomic standpoint. dry Phos will never all become available to the plant as a % of rock Phos will never convert to plant use, whereas Liquid P is 100% available from the time it hits the dirt as is also the case with the K in a liquid form. that and if really dry at planting, the dry may take a few days to become available where again the Liquid is ready to go to work right then.

[Brad Boustead]

James, 

If you are interested, our dry micro program can be easily added right in the hopper with no equipment retrofit required.  Blend contains some talc for flowability so no additional talc required. (Kinze planters work best with 1oz graphite added every other fill) Cost is $232.00 delivered for 25# (400oz) bucket and uses 4oz/50# bag of seed for corn, 2oz/50# soybeans, 2oz/50# forage crops. The "2x2" recommendation is to prevent burning of tap root with traditional in furrow liquid starter.  Our powder that is added to the seed has no leaching or burning problems.

Best regards,

Brad

[James Kelly]

So what exactly is your product and what will it do for my crop?

[Brad Boustead]

James,

The micro-blend suggested above is a blend of sulfur, boron, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, zinc, and a little nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Designed to supplement a best practices NPK program. For wheat will require 3.5 oz/100lbs of seed (a little goes a long way) and trials have shown to increase yield from control (untreated) ave 77.5 bu/acre to 82.5 bu/acre for treated (5 bu/acre increase).

The photo above shows a field with an untreated strip.

Best regards,

Brad

[James Kelly]

ooo ok it's a micro nutrients product like quick roots.... interesting.