AIR FEBRUARY 24, 1999

Thank you Mark, good to have you back, and good morning everyone. I want to call to everyone’s attention the area crops update, next Tuesday, March 2, at the Leonardville Community Building in Leonardville, from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. There’ll be a smoked beef brisket dinner for $5 IF you call in to the Extension Office and register by Friday. Randy Taylor, Ray Lamond and Scott Staggenborg will be on hand to discuss tillage systems, fertilizer placement and fertilizer timing. While a fair amount of this discussion will be in regards to some of the precision ag work going on, a lot of it will also have practical application to any row crop farming.

We have noticed several changes in the past few years in how tillage and fertility are interacting with each other. We are seeing nutrient deficiencies that we never thought we’d see. Chloride sulfur and zinc are becoming fairly commonly applied products. Some of the build up of nutrients that we saw from the 50’s through the 70’s have now been effectively mined out of the soil from the cost cutting fertility programs of the 80’s and 90’s. The increase of no till and reduced till have changed how we need to apply fertilizers. Simple surface broadcast may not cut it when you have 6 to 8000 pounds per acre of surface residue. The increased surface residue often results in cooler wetter soils at planting time greatly changing our perception of the need for starter fertilizer. Traditional soil test interpretation doesn’t hold up to some of the test results we are seeing in corn and grain sorghum. These same wetter soils are also more prone to compaction, sometimes deep compaction. How do we deal with these problems without going completely out of notill? These are some of the questions that will be answered by this trio of specialists, and the meal will additional icing on the cake. Call and make your reservation today and bring your neighbor to this outstanding meeting. Now, if you were thinking about oats and haven’t gotten them planted yet we’ve still got a couple of weeks to get that done. As of last week there was still seed of some of the better varieties still available from area sources, but you need to get this seed in the ground soon for optimum results. And if you haven’t soil tested yet, get rolling, corn planting time will be here before you know it and then it’ll be August!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary county Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook '99.

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