Air September 22, 2004

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone.

The weather is starting to cool off which means that not only is fall official, well at 11:29 this morning anyway, but the cooler weather signal that fall really is on it's way.

I have been hearing some pretty incredible yields for the fall crops harvested so far. This kind of fall harvest is past due by several years, but it brings with it some special problems we'll need to attend to. First of all, there has been a lot of heavy traffic, between combines, grain carts and trucks in those fields. You may think that it's bone dry out there, but you can very likely see compaction that will need to be dealt with at some point. A large crop takes off a lot more nutrients than an average crop. Quite a few of the corn and sorghum fields that I saw were exhibiting nitrogen deficiency by the end of the year. Soil testing is going to be even more crucial for the coming crop year. I'm really encouraging producers to soil test every field AND include a proper profile nitrogen test with that. Okay, how deep do you really need to go for an adequate profile nitrogen test? My feeling is that for wheat you probably don't need to sample more than the top 12 to 18 inches, but for corn and sorghum 18 to 24 is required. With soybeans we don't need a profile nitrogen test obviously, but it wouldn't hurt to get that sample down to 12 inches to make sure that we are getting a good representative Phosphorus profile. Deep placement and tillage can create buried phosphate zones that crops can utilize but may not show up with a typical shallow test. What do you need to test for? The basic test is pH, phosphorus and potassium. That will be adequate for soybeans. For corn, wheat and sorghum I'd recommend the basic test plus nitrogen. And on top of that I'd recommend a chloride test for wheat and in corn, especially irrigated corn, sulfur and zinc. For bromegrass or alfalfa, talk to me because there may be some special tests we want to run, mainly on new plantings. When you bring that test in to the office, tell us what crop was raised this year, and what the yield was, what crop you want to plant next year and what your yield goal is. And make these realistic - wheat yields under 40 or over 100 aren't realistic, but maybe you need to use your 2003 yield level every year. It may be a pain to get those soil samples collected, but the information from them is priceless!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2004.

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