Tier 4

May 292010
 

I spent the day in an office yesterday primarily learning about engines. It’s not exactly my forte, but it was a great learning experience I’m excited about sharing with others nonetheless.

The U.S. Government is requiring engine manufacturers to reduce emissions from diesel engines. Starting January 1, 2011 diesel engines in tractors will be moving from the Tier 3 engines we currently have to the new Tier 4 engines. As you can imagine, the cost of the new engines will be a significant increase from this year’s engines. There will be benefits besides just the reduction in emissions.

I’ll write more about it in upcoming blogs. This will be a very significant change for farmers.

I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend. Whether you’re enjoying your freedom to put in a crop or a long weekend away from work, I encourage you to take at least a few minutes to remember and honor the people who have worked so hard to make this a free country and the best place in the world to live. God Bless America!

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Plant tissue analysis

May 262010
 

I got a few questions today about plant tissue analysis and what the plan was on this corn field. We have 5 main treatments that we’ll be tracking with plant tissue analysis.

1. 10.5 gallons in-furrow of Sure-K, Pro Germ, and Micro 500.
2. 1.5X rate of treatment #1
3. 2X rate of treatment #1
4. Same as treatment #1 but followed by 10 gallons of Sure-K/Pro Germ at side dress.
5. Same as treatment #1 but followed by 20 gallons of Sure-K/Pro Germ at side dress.

This field is so low in fertility, it will be interesting to see how the trials turn out. When you think about it, though, just looking at the yield data in the fall is not good enough. I want to know WHY there was a difference in the fall. With plant tissue analysis, I can tell exactly why by knowing: when a problem developed, what nutrient caused it, and how I can fix it going forward.

I don’t like putting the big downside risk in black and white, but I’m going to do it here. I apologize to anyone who might be offended. WHAT IF I get hailed out or a disaster happens? I don’t want to have to lose a year and learn nothing. Plus, fertilizer is a big investment so I don’t want to waste any by over-applying. For these reasons, tissue sampling lets me learn today the lessons my field can show me.


If you haven’t done any plant tissue tests before, you could just ask this guy. This is my oldest child, Mason. He had some fun out in a few fields with me this afternoon. Tomorrow’s his last day of school so we should be able to do more together the rest of the summer.

If you don’t get the info from Mason, there’s a great resource at
http://www.agphd.com/images/sampling_guide_for_plant_tissue.pdf.

Tissue sampling only costs $20 per sample, so it’s really cheap. I’d recommend testing the same area for 8 to 12 weeks during the growing season. If you’re already running the math in your head like I am right now, that’s 5 spots times 10 weeks times $20 = $1000 to have data about the nutrient uptake in this particular trial throughout the entire growing season. That is a hefty (pun intended) investment for a 60 acre field. However, that data will help us on 2400 acres of ground, so it’s really pretty small. Plus, we’re spending better than $250,000 on fertilizer, so $1000 to find out if we’re putting on the right amount so we can adjust for next year is really pretty cheap.

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Fertility Trials

May 252010
 

One of the bigger projects we’re doing on the Blank Slate is with fertility. Specifically, we’re looking at higher rates of fertilizer in-furrow. This field is a perfect place to do trials like this because:

1. It’s a highly erodible piece of ground (HEL designation).
2. I don’t want to do the full scale tillage that broadcast fertilizer requires.
3. The organic matter levels are very low.
4. It’s a little further away from home, so making less trips to this field is good.

We’re using a blend of Sure-K and Pro Germinator for my potassium and phosphorus needs. We’re adding Micro 500 for the micronutrients. For most of the field, we’re running with 5 gallons per acre of Sure-K, 5 gallons per acre of Pro Germinator, and 2 quarts per acre of Micro 500 for a total mix of 10.5 gallons in-furrow. We’d never dream of using that high a rate in-furrow with most products, but these products have an incredibly low salt index and the crop safety has been great.

It wouldn’t be an experiment if we didn’t test the limits. We put a 15 gallon rate and a 20 gallon rate of this blend in-furrow to see if we’d get a yield response (and to watch for potential injury). We’re also going to side dress another 10 gallons on some strips where we did 10.5 gallons in-furrow to see if splitting the applications of fertilizer gives a benefit in this trial.

Yesterday, we had a couple guys out doing some stand counts in the trials to see what differences we could see. The west end of the field had some crusting issues, but we got about a half inch of rain overnight that may help with that. On the east end of the field the stand was nearly perfect. Other than the crusting, there didn’t seem to be any discernable difference in stand when comparing the various rates of fertilizer applied with the planter.

We’ll continue to monitor things and let you know how the crop does throughout the year. We’ll begin taking some tissue samples next week if all goes well. I need to figure out how best to keep track of that on our FarmPad systems.

FarmPad has been great so far, and much easier to handle than a stack of papers. I still have to learn how to use more of the features besides just record keeping.

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Can you see the problems here?

May 242010
 

Can you see what’s going on here. This is the west valley of the Blank Slate. There’s some serious elevation change here and it’s not even close to the elevation change once you cross over the hill on the left side of the picture and go toward the east end of the field.

I think it’s great that farmers have learned a ton of lessons over the centuries, but as my dad always put it “the definition of experience is past mistakes.” It’s a shame that’s how we usually learn the most. We have to screw up the system God intended and then try to put it back together again. My brother has been quoting Leviticus 25: 23-24. “. . .the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.”

Redemption is an interesting word. To me it doesn’t just mean leave things how they are or even just put things back the way they were. If we have a chance to make things even better, that’s our responsibility. In the picture above, the signs of decades of soil erosion are evident. There’s plenty of topsoil in the valley, but most of it came there from the hillsides. More still has been flushed down that valley and is gone forever.

So how do we address this issue? It’s two fold.
1. Conservation tillage (in other words as little tillage as is absolutely necessary to get the crop in the ground and fertilized)
2. Drainage tile – studies show it reduces soil erosion

Here’s a picture of our tiling rig. It’s resting on this day but will spring into action this week doing work for some neighbors and ourselves. I’m beginning the approval process for the Blank Slate to hopefully tile it this fall or next spring. There are no wetlands on this land so I don’t foresee any challenges. Looks like I’m in for an “experience.”

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Crust Busting

May 222010
 

There are farmers re-planting in the area because the corn is having trouble emerging due to a thick crust on the soil surface. Since this is our first year with the Blank Slate, we haven’t had much chance to remedy this problem by building good soil tilth and great soil structure. This weekend, I’ll be crossing my fingers a little bit. Here’s why.

It doesn’t look like a huge percentage of my stand is in jeopardy, but even a couple thousand plants per acre could really hurt my yields especially if they were in pockets throughout the field rather than evenly dispersed. You can see looking down the row that things are coming along. A weekend rain or even some moisture early next week could soften things up and make a big difference for me.

Fortunately, the rest of our fields look pretty good from what I can tell. We took advantage and did some spraying yesterday on fields that were further along and ones that still needed a PRE (soybeans that had yet to emerge). We just have a little bit of planting to do on a field where we don’t have drainage tile installed. Ironically, our neighbor just north of that field is getting tile done over the next few days.

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