09 11 26 Farmer Friday!

0:00Hello and welcome to a Farmer Friday show on Ag PhD daily. I'm Darren, hefty along with my brother Brian. And we have got a ton of questions that have been coming in, Brian. This is a really exciting time of year as harvest gets going, manure application, fertilizer application, soil testing. There is just so much going on out there. We're going to have our phone lines open. The whole show at 844-44-AG PhD. You can always email us as well. mailbag at agphd.com. Hey, a couple of things that I wanted to mention as we start the show here today. I would just say first of all, if you have had drought issues like we have on our farm this year, where sure, we have some high yielding fields, but our yields are not where they normally are. Well, one of the good things about that is that means there's that much more fertility going into next year.

1:00And nitrogen, quite frankly, is one of the biggest ones. I get it that you might not normally plan on having lots of nitrogen going from one year to the next, but I can just tell you this year on our farm, soil samples getting pulled this fall in our region, showing lots of nitrogen there. So what does that mean? We've had a lot of questions where guys say, hmm, if I'm sitting on that much nitrogen, and by the way, my phosphorus, my potassium, a lot of these nutrients, they're all sitting there still. And I'm slightly worried about carryover risk. Should I go corn on corn? Yes, you probably should. We're going to do a whole bunch of corn on corn on our farm. I just can tell you this. So my dad talked an awful lot about 1976 and how dry it was. And his story, by the way, was that year, Brian, we had less rain than the Mojave Desert. But anyway, the whole point was because the carryover risk, because all the fertilizer still sitting there, everybody went corn on corn, beans on beans, wheat on wheat, and had

2:02tremendous crops in the very next year in 1977. So I would just say, I get it, you might not normally do continuous crop. You might not normally think, oh, I'm going to raise soybeans on soybean ground or corn on corn ground. But it's something that you may have to think about if you have been in a really dry area like ours. So the other side of this is because there's a short crop this year, and I quite frankly still don't believe the report's coming out. I still think the crop is going to be shorter than what they say. Look at what's happened to the crop prices for the next three years. They are all much higher on the board. So it gives all of us more opportunity to sell for higher prices in the future. So quite frankly, I'm excited about that. And a number of other things that we've been talking about here for the last couple of months, including new technologies, lower herbicide prices. I mean, there's a lot of great stuff going on. And then I get most excited about all the things we've learned with soil fertility.

3:02So matching soil tests to yield, charting those things out on farms all across the country, it's been awesome. So just trying to fine tune how we're investing those fertilizer dollars, it's great. All right. Let's get to the IPHD mailbag. It's now mailbag time with Brian and Aaron. All right. All right. Let's start with Brian from Iowa. You've got that on the iPad there to pull up soil tests. And he said he owns a farm. It was sample last fall and lime was applied. Now he wants to work on microbes and get them in balance. So a couple of things. First of all, he's wondering about what is the maximum rate of zinc boron and copper. He can put out there this fall safely. Well, look, I don't know for sure on anything. All right. So there's always mother nature that enters in, how you apply it when you apply it everything else. But let's just talk about what are our goals?

4:03What are our targets here? We're really trying to get to. Well, okay. So we got that quite. We got several questions here. So he wants to know about that. He wants to know Kenyann capsulate copper on the fertilizer. And he wants to know about the K to magnesium ratio. In general, what do you think about that? He's noticed that ratio seems to be off to. Yeah. Okay. So let's start with this. I don't know what lab we're running through. Did it say by chance? So okay. So this isn't exact. But I will just tell you roughly when we see a P1 phosphorus test, usually, then I want to see, okay, what are those levels? Let's just call it roughly 60. We're at 60 parts per million, which is a good level. And then I want the zinc level to be one tenth of that at worst, okay? So one tenth of 60 is six. And when I look at the zinc, we're down near one. Yeah, there's two. One grid point that's six point two. And I'd be curious to see, do you notice any difference in that one particular grid point?

5:05I'm just telling you the performance for the brand for my own. Okay. I got you. So the first thing I'm going with all this is, can you apply an zinc sulfate to get yourself from two to six and one? You're absolutely. Zinc sulfate is pretty safe. Just broadcast it, but keep in mind, if you don't till it in, it's not getting into the plant. Zinc doesn't move in the soil, just like phosphorus doesn't, copper doesn't. So you've got to put them down in the soil. However, I don't really like deep injection with it because then you have streaks of zinc or copper or phosphorus through the field. So if you're going to do a build program, that's where I say, I like broadcasting, driving sulfate. I like broadcasting copper sulfate. Usually what we want is take that phosphorus level divided by 30. And that's the lowest we want to see our copper. That's two parts per million, but quite frankly, I'd like to see three or four. Maybe even a little bit more. I'm assuming this is a DTPA test here, not a male, like three.

6:07Okay. So that's all fine. Let's talk about the boron real quick, because I'm guessing that's where you're worried about the whole safety issue. So if I look at my boron levels here, I go, we are down to 0.3 parts per million. That's not good. That's most likely hurting yield. How far can you push it? Well, eventually, I'm not saying in one year, but eventually take your calcium levels. It's roughly 3000 parts per million, divide by 1000. So we could get our boron to be 10X what it is today. I'm not saying in one shot, but work on like a three year build. Just build it up maybe one part per million at a time. That's two pounds per acre. So you should be in pretty good shape doing that. I, to make it safe, I put it out on the fall. I do dry. I broadcast it. And then we're usually okay. So that's what I would do. I threw a couple of pounds of actual boron out there, dry broadcast in the fall. And then finally, the magnesium to potassium ratio. I usually want that in terms of parts per million to be two to one.

7:12And I don't have parts per million here. I don't think on potassium. Oh, yeah, I do. Okay, I got potassium and magnesium. Right now you actually have two little magnesium in a bunch of it. So it's nothing I'm super worried about, but I'd probably get a little more magnesium out there. That should help your a little bit. UPL is proud to introduce the UPL Unlimited Financing Program, whether it's seed treatment, crop protection products, or biosolutions. Get what you need when you need it, with no payment until after harvest. Built to support both growers and retailers by offering great financing terms and long payback periods, the UPL Financing Program delivers more control, transparency, and flexibility. Contact your UPL retailer today to find out how you can protect your fields and your wallets with UPL Unlimited Financing. Spot less. Introducing the cleanup for tar spot, great leaf spot, southern rust, and more. Novel, next generation at Astro-O-Bungea side. Rodinger Spectrum and Strength Inter residual when it comes to full your disease control

8:15in corn. Visit your FMC retailer or at astro.ag.fmc.com to clean up this season. Follow 2W for tar spot management in corn. Ballad until 131.28. Always read and follow all label directions. Your Farm Data Platform might let you manage your fertilizer plan by helping you set sample points, determine management zones, or create fertilizer recommendations. With Verify, you can do all that. But what Verify does that no one else can is take yield data straight from your combine, correlate this info to soil test points, and immediately generate variable rate fertilizer maps based on your nutritional goals. Whether you want to build soil levels, balance your field for uniform nutrition, or maintain fertility levels by simply applying what you removed at harvest. And with full integration with John Deere Operations Center, Verify can send recommendations directly to application equipment, no matter the color.

9:18Sign up for your Verify account today at Verify.com and keep your farm moving. That's V-R-A-F-Y.com. Maverick Corn Herbicide from Vailant USA has proven to be a key part of growers success in fighting problematic weeds. But don't take it from us. Take it from farmer Rob Schaefer. Residuals have become a big part of our chemical programs with trying to battle water hemp and also mayor's tail is our big one. It's done a real good job on controlling those. You don't have to put a bunch of gallons in your sprayer, cover a lot of acres that way. Visit valent.com-slash-maverick to learn more about Maverick Corn Herbicide. Visit Read and Follow Label Instructions. It all comes down to this. His whole season is on the line, he needs these numbers to place next year's seed order. Looks like he's going for the old filing cabinets. Shuffling through the folders, rifling through the papers. Oh, came up empty. Wait a minute, a new player is checking in. It's John Deere Operations Center.

10:19All that farm data stored and organized in one place. Now that's how you win the season, folks. JohnDeere.com-slash-operation center for the win. Welcome back to Ag PhD. Daily, I'm Brian Hefty, along with my brother, Darren. We are live in the Terriplex Studios and right before the break, we were talking about some questions we got from Brian and Iowa and I just wanted to clear this up a little bit because we talked about the magnesium to potassium ratio. Usually we like that one to one to maybe two to one. I was looking at parts per million real quick and actually he's got an unusual situation where the magnesium in some cases is higher than the potassium. No, the potassium is higher than the potassium. Yes, potassium is higher than magnesium. That's unusual. Generally speaking, the magnesium is much higher than the potassium and that's good. That's what we want, roughly a two to one ratio, but even if it's one to one, it's fine. So if that happens, then we want to go over to the base saturation test and take a look

11:20at our magnesium and we see it down to seven and a half percent, 9.6 percent, 8.8 percent. It's not like it's crazy, though. I usually like to get that up close to 12 percent, even if it's at 10, though we're in pretty good shape. However, what I would consider trying, let's say that we're at 7.3 percent base saturation potassium and 7.3 percent magnesium, I might try a little bit of magnesium sulfate out there in season, in crop and just see what I can do. Magnesium can move down through the soil much better than a lot of other nutrients. It's not going to leak as easily as nitrogen, but I'm just saying that would be something that you certainly could consider. All right. All right. Thanks for the question. We appreciate that. First up, we got Pat over in Iowa. How you doing, Pat? Oh, pretty good. It's a nice day today. Yeah. Beautiful day. Has Harvest started in your area? Well, we had a hail event a few weeks ago and it hit me personally, but several people

12:23have been out trying to salvage what's there. So it sounds like anywhere from 60 to 110 bushland acre right now. So it took a bite out of it. Yeah. No doubt about that. I'm sorry to hear that. It's no fun, especially late in the season when you can already see the crop is there. It's really no fun. Did you get much rain with that? How are you guys sitting on moisture? We've had rain nonstop. It seems like it's in the forecast again next week. It's right here. I haven't had too much, but I've had enough. That's for sure. I'm ready to shut the faucet off. Yeah. You sound like my brother, Pat. He's like, all right, it's Harvest time now. No more rain. We don't need anything until next spring will be good. I mean, that's the extreme, of course. But yeah, this is the challenge when we get wet at planting time or we get wet at Harvest for everybody. Man, there's a lot of work that needs to get down out there.

13:24What do you have this fall? Any special projects you're working on? Any tiling projects? Any big things that are kind of out of the ordinary? Well, there's one thing out of the ordinary is we're listing the farm for sale. I guess so. Not looking towards the future, I guess. Yeah, that's always a tough thing in your career, I guess. What are some of the issues around you? I assume you got plenty of neighbors that are looking to expand, maybe? Well, in this particular area, in the next five years, I bet you we'd have between two and five thousand acres that could be for sale. It's just everybody's old like me. A lot of them are eight-year-olds that are still hanging on. And it's kind of wanted to be one of the first ones out the door instead of one of the last, I guess. So, there's a few big farmers around that might be interested, but surprisingly, not a real

14:30seller's market right here in this area. Yeah, interesting. You're right on that. The timing is everything and a lot of these big decisions on the farm. No doubt about it. Well, Pat, good luck to you guys. Hopefully everything goes well for you. Hopefully, things turn out well. And the farm continues on in good hands. We really appreciate Abney on today. Okay, thank you. Good. Our friend, Tony Wendler, up next. Tony, how are you doing? I'm doing good today, Darren. Beautiful sunny day. Yeah, we can use that this time of year. No doubt about it. What's happening in your neck of the woods? Having lots of conversations with people about getting their bins organized, bin-fant controls, rehydrating beans. The people are getting some interest in getting some things organized, so they're ready for crops with the way this September has been. People are experiencing rapid dry downs in the areas where their crops are matured.

15:35And talking corn down to 10%, beans down on the eighths and ninths, you get a little further south and that moisture is coming out of crops so fast. It's unbelievable. Yeah, the other thing, Tony, that we've had a lot of questions on just the variability out there. We've talked to farmers that are trying to pick some areas out of fields where part of the field is ready. I think that's a great strategy to try to get as much grain in as you can at ideal moisture. But man, you're right. We're seeing some of those spots drying down super, super quick. It's going to be a little uneven out there this year, I'm afraid. Yeah, it's a conversation. I got a guy in Southwest Iowa who is setting things up in his bin and he's got beans in and the variability like you're saying. Starting from 8 1 1 2 1 2 12 is going to be in the bin that he's filling. He's got a few loads in it and he thought this is going to be a problem. So he's getting the device in right now and to be ready to finish filling it up.

16:41That's always the fear, Tony, that we've thought about bin fan controls and probably not going to need it this year. And then all of a sudden, oh my goodness, yeah, I do need to pull the trigger on that. How fast can you get things set up in a bin? Is this a job or other than maybe some of the wiring you can do a lot of it yourself? Actually, the big thing is if you're worried about things and you could back it off to this level, talk to us and just find out, okay, you got a bin of a certain size, put two monitors in the bin if it's a small one. You know, whatever the appropriate number is, so we got the appropriate number of sensing cables. So those cables into the bin, you can worry about everything else later on a rain day. The point of you hooking everything else up, but get the cables in, get them in place, you're golden after that. You come along and say, well, hey, this year, my beans had adequate moisture. I've got the monitors on, I know what's going on, I can make sure I'm maintaining it and

17:44I'll get a fan control next year or you can come in and say I've got 9% beans. I've got to get the fan control now to use the information I get off the monitors to put that bin back to where I want it from moisture. So what are kind of some safe levels, Tony, that you can move things? Obviously, a point or two doesn't seem to be any issue. You know, some of these 8% beans, gosh, we've seen things get super, super dry in the past. How much moisture could you put back in potentially without having some issues in your bin? The big thing, the big rule of thumb is bean depth. 25 feet is what the engineers have told me is where you need to, don't worry about below 25 feet and their less than the me was, beans are like a marble. So put marbles in the glass, you look through the glass, half that space is marbles, half it is air between the marbles. So when we expand beans that are 25 foot of grain depth and less, they will expand into

18:49the air space and become irregularly shaped. I've got people who have done numbers like seven and things like that back towards 13. I don't know how far they went, but my understanding is 25 feet of grain depth and less don't worry about it. Now if you center pilot and you put a 10 foot pile on top of that 25, your depth in the center is 35, you now need to consider that 10 feet. Engineers, comments to me were 25 feet, don't worry about it, 30 feet think about it, so only put in like 3 points, 35 feet think a lot about it. So only put in a point and a half, 2 points, 40 feet don't do it. And they, they're comments me split a bin, somebody goes put 3 points into a 60 footer, they've got high risk because the bottom 10 to 20% of that bin is very compacted and we'll be hitting those beans with moist air first.

19:51They're the first thing that need to expand and there's not much air, so the only thing you can do is now push on the bin steel. So yeah, yeah, that's for sure. This is great stuff and it's timely to be talking about this and I'd love to catch up with you again next week and talk a little bit more about it. We're talking with Tony Wendler here, you can find a lot of resources from Tony and get a hold of Tony yourself if you want to have a conversation at farmshopmfg.com. It's Farm for Friday and we'll be right back. When it comes to making successful crops, there's a lot of ground to cover. It's time for the Egg PhD Spotlight. In today's Spotlight, we've got a question that came in from Zach down in Southern Illinois and Brian, you're going to have to be patient with me for a minute as I set this story up because I think this is awesome. He said, I've heard you guys talking about planting corn early to gain more corn yield,

20:55but I also hear a lot of people in agriculture talking about planting soybeans early, they get more vegetative growth, more nodes, which means more pods and more beans, which makes a lot of sense to me. I'm curious about the why behind corn. On our farm, we decided to try it out and so we planted 25% of our corn early, which is April 9th to April 15th for us. Our first crop insurance date is April 1st. We normally plant around May 15th. So we planted the other 75% of our corn, May 15th. So this summer, it got hot, especially the second half of August, the May planted corn was in the early reproductive stages. We got about two inches of rain in August this year, and by August 20th, we haven't, but since August 20th, we haven't seen a drop. From the yield checks we've done so far, the early corn looks like it'll be the best we have. Could the early planted success be attributed more to growing season and about rainfall?

21:56Or what do you think? What have you seen on your farm? Well, here's the thing. You can look at data going back the last 50 years, typically early beets late. That's just the way it works. So we want more opportunity for more growth, which means you can raise later day corn, which typically yields more. But sure, I mean, you never know with mother nature. This is the reason why we say spread your risk. So we like people planting lots of different hybrids. When our farm will plant probably 15 different corn hybrids, we want to spread our maturity. We want to spread our planting date. And if we're planting over a three week time frame, sometimes four weeks, then I've got a better chance that I'm sure I'm going to hit some lows, but I'm also going to hit some highs, but just on average, we always have to look at on average. How do we turn out? Well, I don't know what your area is exactly, but I will bet you that if you go back to any data that any research that's been done over the years, typically early planting

22:59is going to win. All right. So here's one of those. Here's one of those late too. So on our farm, typically May 15, planning is going to be 50 bushels less than April 15. All right. Now, he mentioned that his early planted corn took seven days to emerge. His later planted corn only took five. Yep. Do you see that as a big factor? No. And what do you normally look for? Don't care. Couldn't care less. I don't care if it takes three or four weeks to see it out of the ground. What I do care about is getting it in early. And that also allows you to get the work done because here's the other big thing that we all run into as farmers were squeezed every spring. We're trying to put in 3,000 acres of corn on our farm each spring with one planter. Okay. So if I get behind, if we're behind all of a sudden now this, oh, I want to finish by May 1 becomes May 10, May 20, May 30, or it doesn't get done. And there are a lot of people throughout my region of the country. They don't even get planted some years. So this is a big part of why we need to start early.

23:59Yeah. I didn't mention when the crop insurance state was for soybeans in his area, but he's talking about, hey, planting beans early too. So the question is, which do you plant first? What do you mean, both is good? Well, yeah. But I mean, the corn dates almost always early in the soybean dates. So just start when the corn date hits and then start some beans. You want to finish up with corn? You sure can, but we love planting corn early, beans early. It usually works out pretty well. Well, stick around. We'll be right back after this. It's farm for Friday on Ag PhD daily. I'm Darren Hefty along with my brother, Brian, we're taking your calls and questions at 844-44 Ag PhD, or you can send us an email mailbag at agphd.com. Next up, we get Chelsea down in Nebraska. How's it going, Chelsea? Hi, Darren and Brian. Thanks for taking my call. Enjoy your guys' show. It's going well. We do custom silage chopping, so we are in the heat of that and between the tar spot

25:04here and the heat, we are trying our best to stay ahead of it. Yeah. The tar spot thing is kind of interesting. And I know last fall down in Northeast Nebraska, from visiting one week, looking at some different plots to come back about a week or 10 days later, the tar spot came in pretty heavy at the end of the season. How early did it come and when did it really get to be an issue? Yes, we actually spotted ours this year in June. And last year, it was, we didn't, I guess, notice it until July. So last year, we did a single application of fungicide in July this year. We were a lot more prepared for it to hit it earlier. And then we were ready to do a second application, which we did. It held it back, but it, you know, it still progressed rather more than what we were hoping. Yeah, there's certainly pressure in Nebraska.

26:05That's been one thing I've seen over the last few years. You guys have a lot more pressure than we've got just a little ways for the north from you. Yeah. And we've seen it progress farther north this year. It stayed kind of a little bit farther south, I guess, where we live like 30 miles south of us, but it has progressed the farther north. Yeah, it's, it's things are changing so, so fast. And I would say it is correlated with some hybrids too. There's certain hybrids that tolerate it better than others. Yeah, yeah, no doubt about that. I know the seed companies are pretty aware of that. And they're, they're working hard at getting better choices for you. So hopefully Chelsea in a few years will say, okay, this isn't so hard picking the right hybrid anymore. They're all getting pretty good. We sure saw that with Goss's wilt. I know, now if we would have been talking 15 years ago, you would have said the same thing there, boy, there aren't many Goss's wilt tolerance. Hybrids and now, now there's some pretty good ones out there.

27:09Yeah, that's, that's, yes, I'm, I'm looking forward to that. I know they're working on it and it's, it's frustrating. It we're kind of all in the same boat, I guess, yet it's with high input costs, input costs. And a down market, it's just really challenging to, to have these struggles. But yeah, on the Sylogen to things, it's just there. We're not seeing, we're really struggling to see tonnage, you know, hit that 25. We've been dropping since the end of July, which we've never chopped that early in prior years. But a lot of the dry land that didn't throw years, it was just getting burnt up. And we're mostly irrigated here. We are mostly sand. But and moisture wise, 52 to 58, most cattle feeders would love it. That 65. It's, and we've been working around the clock. It's just you can see it changing by the day. Yeah. And I noticed in our area two year over the weekend, there were guys taking that last cutting of alpha, hey, up to, and they were going all night just trying to have any moisture

28:11and that stuff they could. Well Chelsea, good luck to you. I know it's a super busy time for you. And corn silage is pretty demanding to get that all done timely. So good luck. Stay safe. And let's talk again soon. We'll do. Thank you. Have a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Another caller down into Brasco. We got Dan on with us. How's it going, Dan? Nice breezy day down here. Yeah, that wind is blowing. I think it's starting with you guys. It's ending up up here. It's coming pretty hard. Yeah. Oh, we took our soil tests from last fall into West Point. We're going to work with them this year. Sure. Got some good guys there. And our pH is down in the five. OK. Now, if you were going to put line down, would you just put straight ag lime? Or would you use some tell lime with ag lime? Yeah. There are a lot of different choices and lime sources. Even correct me if I'm wrong, brand down in that nick of the woods. You got egg shells and you got a whole bunch of other opportunities.

29:14So yeah, we use water treatment lime a lot of times too. But yeah, I mean, here's the thing, Dan. Are we talking heavy soil here? Or is this real sandy ground? Everything in between. Well, we're going with it. You know what I mean? We're here. We're in the country. Yeah, where I'm going with this is. We're pretty flat for the most part. Oh, you are. OK. OK. I'm going to look down. Yep. So we want to fix this for good, or at least for as long as we can. So that's usually where guys are talking ag lime. So sure, with the pell lime, we get a real high quality product. We can change the pH fairly quick. But it just depends on what type of lime we're talking about with that ag lime. In other words, what's the fineness? That's the effective calcium carbon and equivalent. And then of course, what's the cost? But yes, usually we're talking about ag lime. If it's ground that we own, it's ground that we want to fix the pH for the long term. If all were after, so if all were after is a little quick fix, we only have a few spots

30:15here there. We need to spread it ourselves. That kind of thing. Then the pell lime fits in better. Yeah. I say just ag lime. That you didn't mention is the magnesium. And so looking at that lime, is it just high calcium? It's a high calcium and magnesium. I'm guessing you don't need the magnesium, but maybe you do. I haven't seen your samples. Yeah. It's been a while since they're up at West Point, been there for a while, so I couldn't tell. Yeah. I think in your area, a lot of times, guys, are mostly looking for the calcium sides. They just make sure it's high calcitic lime. But yeah, your agronomist will know that then answer to you. But yeah, I mean, the big thing is when we start talking about corn production, I mean, the yield falls off pretty rapidly when we get that pH down into the fives. It's not as critical for soybeans. It's still important. But I mean, the corn yield really drops off. Yeah. And I assume we're talking about mainly corn or is it corn beans? What other, any other crops you raise? One third and we're all irrigated. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. So we'll have water on it. And then, you know, I'd get it out as soon as harvest is done this fall, give it a little

31:16more time to work. It's generally three years for ag lime to really fully express in the soil. It's a little moisture dependent too. Are you going to do tillage once you put the lime out or is it going to be just left on the surface? Either way is fine. Well, we've been no telling for the last couple of years we switched to it. But we, I imagine it should be worked in. It doesn't have to be. Yeah. Yeah, you can't, you definitely can lay it lay on top of the ground. We've done that. Just takes a little longer for it to work. I mean, just takes a little more moisture to get it going. You got pivots so you can make it work. Okay. We'll see where this goes then. So thanks for your time. Appreciate it. You bet. Thanks a lot, Dan. We appreciate it. Yeah, we get a lot of questions online. That's a, it's a big one this time of year. It makes such a big difference. Often, the first thing we're looking at on soil tests is soil pH. And when we see something out of balance, we can fix it with calcium like that. It's a pretty good way to go. All right. Well, again, today it's farm-refriday. We'd love to hear from you. Our phone lines are open right now 84444 ag PhD or you can send us an email mailbag at

32:21agphd.com. We'll be right back. Maverick Corn Herbicide from valent USA has proven to be a key part of growers success in fighting problematic weeds. But don't take it from us. Take it from farmer Rob Schaefer. Residuals have become a big part of our chemical programs with trying to melt a water hemp and also mayor's tail is our big one. It's done a real good job in controlling those. You don't have to put a bunch of gallons in your sprayer cover a lot of acres that way. Visit valent.com backslash maverick to learn more about Maverick Corn Herbicide. Always read and follow label instructions. Some guys are really into smoking meat. Some are really into golf. And some are into pouring over soil samples to determine ideal phosphorus rates. Weird. Not when it works for your crops. At agro liquid our agronomists live this stuff every day. Meaning you get expert advice, trial data and products that deliver the nutrients your

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36:28Read and follow pesticide legal directions. It's farmer Friday on ag PhD daily. We're taking your calls and questions at 844-44 ag PhD. You can also send us an email mail bag at agphd.com. And that's exactly what Weston did. Weston sent in some soil samples down in Iowa, not too far away from where our grandpa used to farm. And boy, there's quite a bit of variance out here. So he said, he had some farm soil samples pulled last summer. We put on lime last fall to start working on this pH problem. Just want to know what you think about P and K levels. We're going to do some variable rate. What do we need to do to get them corrected? What should we be shooting for for goals here? OK, so a couple of things. First of all, when we take a look at the soil pH on this, well, with everything, we got

37:30a lot of variability. So we've got pH range from 4.5 all the way to 7.7 when I look all through this, but a lot of stuff in the fours and fives. That's really, really, really bad. So if you're down in the fours, you're given up probably 30% of your corn yield maybe more. So we have to get that fixed and we have to get that fixed immediately. Yeah, so we're looking for calcitic lime. Yeah. We've got lots of magnesium. So just make sure that we're putting out calcitic lime and we're in pretty good shape. The other big thing is when I look at potassium, I say, hey, we're clear down to 2% base saturation potassium. We got to get that up as well. We'd really like to see that up near four. I take a look at the Mealic 3 phosphorus test where down as low as 22, that's bad. 42 is the average. Also not real good for that area and the yield potential that's there. But here's the thing. We got as high as 112. Just like if I go back to that pH, we've got as high as 7.7. Well, we don't want to do any pH correction at 7.7. We don't really need any phosphorus at 112 parts per million.

38:36But here's the other thing. Okay. I look on the soil test. I see sulfur, zinc, manganese, iron, copper, boron. You know what I have for levels? No readings. So when you run soil tests, please get all the information because I can't make you a good recommendation here. And I get it that a lot of people say NPK, NPK, NPK. I will promise you that on a lot of farms out there, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are not the yield limiting factor today. And I don't have any of those microbes or sulfur. So those are all things that we'd really like to know. All right. Thanks for the question. Hey, since we just had a lime question, there is another one that came in from Rye in. And he said, I'm considering variable rate lime applications after harvest for the first time. I rotate between strip till corn, no till soybean. Should I be adjusting the lime rates since I won't be tilling the lime in or are you concerned with up to four tons of lime sitting on the surface? He also has a herbicide question.

39:36Well, okay. Here's the thing. If you are a no tiller or even in strip till, you're not going to go out and do full tillage with your lime. So that's a big reason why we just want to make sure we're regularly soil testing. I'm not talking about every year, even every other year. Just once every fourth year is fine. But then when you see the problem, fix the problem. So where I'm going with this is, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of throwing four tons per acre out there in no till. It's probably going to be okay. But why take the chance? Why don't we hit this when we only needed two tons in a no till type situation? Now, if it's conventional till, no big deal. I mean, I'm fine pushing it all the way up in some cases to 2500 pounds of actual calcium, which like in our area, it's usually around six tons of lime. So we can do that in conventional till because we're stirring it around in the soil in a few inches. But we're not doing that no tiller strip till. So that's where I'd rather keep that rate low.

40:37But I can't say I'm super worried about it. It's probably going to be okay. But I'd really like to look at the whole soil test because like just a minute ago, we were talking about a soil test where the base saturation potassium was only 2%. Well if you put lime on, that's going to make the base saturation potassium even worse. Now we're not going to have tie up with potassium. We could have some tie up with iron, maybe a little bit with phosphorus, things like that. I'm not worried about the K getting tied up. That's not happening. I'm just simply saying we want to look at overall how we do it on soil ratios. Where's our pH at? Do some variable rate stuff. I think that's a fantastic idea. If you have to go as high as four tons, fine. But if the average was four tons, which then means you might be pushing it to five, six, seven tons, that's probably too much in a no till type situation. So if it's me, I might hit it with a couple of, let's say I needed four tons in some areas or call it, let's call it six tons. Let's say I needed six tons in a no till situation in some areas. I might split it up and I might do a couple tons this year, a couple next year, a couple

41:40of year after that, or maybe it's three this year, three in a couple of years, something like that. So you see where I'm going with all this. This is why we've got to pay attention to how's our soil doing. Because I want to catch it when I'm at a 5.9 and oh, I got to get it up to six, two, or six, three, as opposed to if I'm down to 4.9 and now I got to have this massive leap way up. The other concern he had about this leaving lime on the soil surface, he said, I'm using metribusin in my soybean pre, which can be a problem in high pH soils. Wondering if a concentration of lime near the surface increases the chance of metribusin damage. I've been using an already low rate one third pound since we have higher pH spots on the farm. Yeah, personally, I haven't ever seen any issue with that because we've done a bunch of lime and done metribusin even in some no-till strip-till situation. So I don't think it's a real big concern, but you're right. That could slightly impact the metribusin at least in the short term. So by going with a third of a pound or less, we basically safe in it.

42:44Like an R-farm, we're going to do a bunch of half pound. In this fall, we're probably going to do a bunch of 2-third pound rate of metribusin stuff. So I mean, 2-thirds of a pound is the full rate. I'm just saying, as long as you have heavy soil and we're not getting super carried away in this lime situation to the point where we're going to dramatically raise the pH way up to 7.5 or 8, I don't really think I have any big concerns. Okay. Minuer question. This is from James in North Carolina. He said, I was listening to you talking about adding manure to your soil. The problem that I've had is what do you do with manure that's been treated with a product like a milestone, toward on that kind of thing that has residual that could kill your next crop. Then don't plant that crop. So... Or use the manure in a pasture situation or a permanent grass situation, something like that. Yeah, I know, but people don't want to do that. So like, toward on, for example, a lot of people in our region had used grazon, toward on that kind of thing we have as well. And if it's toward on, well, I'm not too worried about corn or wheat.

43:47I'm super worried about any broadleaf crop that you're going to raise. So I would just say, look on the label of whatever product that it is and see what crop could I rotate to sooner rather than later and just keep raising that crop. There is one where we took a pasture, turned it into crop ground and we put it into corn for, I'm going to say, eight years in a row, might even be in 10. Just to be on the safe side because we knew there had been toward on out there. So that's what you have to do, just plant the appropriate crop and yeah, I get it. It's not normal to just raise a continuous crop, but that's what you have to do in some of those situations. All right, stick around. We've got more farmer Friday and your questions coming up next. Get the job done with tires that are built to work for you, available in VF technology and backed by an eight year warranty. Maxim's tires are engineered for farmers and growers, no matter the job. Discover more at maximtire.com. Optimize your soil and your bottom line with the soil warrior from environmental tillage

44:48systems. Combat the toughest field conditions with an efficient tool optimized to fit your fields without sacrificing yield. Discover the potential of your farm at soil warrior.com. Some guys are really into smoking meat. Some are really into golf and some are into pouring over soil samples to determine ideal phosphorus rates. Weird? Not when it works for your crops. At Agro Liquid, our agronomists live this stuff every day, meaning you get expert advice, trial data, and products that deliver the nutrients your crops need to thrive. Find your weirdly knowledgeable agronomists today at agrolyquid.com. They say seeing is believing and nothing catches the eye like the seven bushel breaker yield advantage of Veltima fungicide over other fungicide. But don't just take our word for it. See it for yourself. Try to compare us in a Veltima fungicide. Enter the real results yield challenge and experience the difference it makes in your fields. And when you share your experience with us, you'll get a chance to win a two year lease

45:50on a new truck. Sign up at yieldchallenge.basf.us. No purchase necessary. See official rules for details. Always read and follow the directions. Your farm data platform might let you manage your fertilizer plan by helping you set sample points, determine management zones, or create fertilizer recommendations. With Verify, you can do all that. But what Verify does that no one else can is take yield data straight from your combine, correlate this info to soil test points, and immediately generate variable rate fertilizer maps based on your nutritional goals. Whether you want to build soil levels, balance your field for uniform nutrition, or maintain fertility levels by simply applying what you removed at harvest. And with full integration with John Deere Operations Center, Verify can send recommendations directly to application equipment, no matter the color. Sign up for your Verify account today at Verify.com and keep your farm moving.

46:54That's V-R-A-F-Y.com. TriVolt Corner beside from Bayer delivers clean fields for up to eight weeks. What? Don't believe us. Listen to some of the growers who've already sprayed it on millions of acres. They performed great for a long past eight weeks. The proof is in the field. And the proof is in the results. TriVolt kept my fields clean from the time I sprayed it clear through the past. Results growers are more than pleased with. It doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense. They've tried it. You should too. Talk to your local dealer. TriVolt is a restricted use pesticide. Consult your state pesticide regulator for specific restrictions. Read and follow pesticide legal directions. Introducing this year's instinct next gen in insert nitrogen stabilizers. Featuring the same leading active as always and now announcing nothing new because our performance still leads every competitor. Our nitrogen stabilizers aren't new. They're proven with thousands of field trials and decades of experience leading the competition. No gimmicks, no empty promises. Now that deserves some hype.

47:56For tough residue this fall, the Insight Universal Tillage and Quadrutil Primary Tillage Tools from McFarlane Ag are ideal for one past seedbed management. Visit McFarlaneag.com to find your closest dealer. Nitrogen management should be simple. Now there's a line in delivering nitrogen directly on and into the leaf for stronger in season nitrogen response. Average yield gains over seven bushels per acre and more than $18 per acre in net return. Protect your fertilizer investments with a line in. Learn more at tidalgrowag.com. Broadcasting from the Terriplex Studios on a farmer Friday. I'm Darren Hefty along with my brother Brian and we are taking questions here. This one came in from Chris via email. He sent it into mailbag at agphd.com. Chris has got some hog barns on their farm and what they're looking at is the location

48:57and patterns of a problem. They've got affected areas just south and southeast of the hog barns. They're wondering if they're dealing with something related to compaction. Minuer run off possible leak, something else in the field and then also they sent soil tests in just kind of curious if we see anything there. Yeah. When I look at it, he's got growth and no growth. Normally we like higher fertility levels and that leads to higher yields. He has no growth. He has much higher, like three times as much phosphorus all the way to 240 parts per million on a P1 soil test. 384 parts per million on potassium. The base saturation case is 8.5%. Base saturation magnesium is 13. The sodium is only 1.2%. I don't see anything that's alarming when I go to the micronutrients or nitrogen or anything. There's certainly nothing there that's going to kill a crop. It's most likely just a compaction issue or it could have been some other weird thing

49:59that happened. Let's say for example that you were out spraying some herbicide and a whole bunch got dumped in a strip somewhere and there was an accident that way. That happened to us one time. Killed everything for a while. Maybe it's just, yeah, like you said, something that leaked out of the barn or whatever but nothing's showing up on the soil test. Maybe there's something deeper than however deep you pulled these soil tests but there's really nothing here. I don't know. If you're listening or you're watching this and you say, wait a second, if we've got really high fertility levels, why are we not getting high yield? This is very common. If you have poor yielding areas on your farm, think about this. Most people over the years have applied the same rate of fertilizer or manure across whole fields. Well, if you have a poor yielding area, you're putting out way more fertility than what that crop is using. This is one of the big reasons why we are enormous believers in doing variable rate because

51:01honestly, you don't need any phosphorus there for probably the next five years. You don't need any potassium there for probably the next five years. That will save you a lot of money. I'm just saying this is why we have to do small grids, small zones when we're soil testing. Then we can variable rate that fertilizer and put our dollars where they really need to go. Just further investigation needs to be done here. I don't have the answers but there is something obviously going on if you're getting no growth and no yield in that area but it's not related to fertility for anything that at least is on this test. All right. Thanks for the question. Next one up comes from Brian over in Indiana. He sent in some half acre grids out where they have fruit trees and he mentioned a couple of things that he sees right away on the test. He said our average potassium is only around 1.5%. We can see that and our phosphorus is low as well. We know we got to do that. Also he said looking like they need some more sulfur, especially in RoC and the other thing

52:05that he's just kind of concerned about is the pH. He said I was surprised that my higher elevation levels had higher pH and the low areas with worse drainage had the low pHs. I know there was some dirt moved on this property many years ago but any other idea why that might be the case. Yeah because you're okay. You said high pH on the high ground. Right? Yeah. That happens all the time for us because we're into the subs oil. That's the issue. When you start talking about erosion of the... Yeah. All your good ground ended up at the bottom and now you're left with subs oil and sometimes that's just naturally high in pH. That's easy to explain. But yeah. When I look at phosphorus and I see it's less than 10 and I may look three tests, I go, that's brutal. If it's me, I'm not only broadcasting. If I own the ground. I'm not only broadcasting. I'm strip-tilling as well and banding because there's no phosphorus out there.

53:06Nothing. Potassium. I mean, we're down a bunch of them less than 1.5% base saturation K and we're down under 100 parts per million. We got almost nothing. I hate to tell you but that's the big issue that we got here. You're going to have to invest. You know this isn't a huge amount of acres. You don't have to do any variable rate. Every acre down can take a whole bunch of PNK. Yep. You desperately need PNK and then once we get some of those things taken care of our sulfur super low. I mean, we're at 10 parts per million or less and I'd like that 40 or 50, ideally, but at least get enough out there to feed the crop. Zinc. I mean, sure, right now it's not a yield-liminifactor because phosphorus is so low. So today, phosphorus in number one, potassium is number two. But eventually when you get your zinc up where it needs to be 50 or 100 parts per million, that zinc is going to be a real problem for you. Copper. I mean, not bad, but around 2 parts per million. Boron. We're down under 1 part per million and we've got some calcium levels up. 3,000 or more. So we could push the boron up to 3 parts per million if we wanted to eventually in most

54:11of these areas. So yeah, it's just for today when I look at it, I go PNK all day long. I'm putting PNK on that. That's your biggest issue today. All right. Thanks for the questions. Next one comes in from David who wants to talk about grass in their flower patches. He said, we just finished planting several acres in sunflowers and then separate acres into wildflowers. And I need advice on what I can spray when grasses like crab grass get into the wildflowers. Last year we used clethidium, it worked great when crab grass got into the sunflowers since sunflowers are broadleaf plants. But we're now of the opinion that many of these wildflowers are in the grass family and they're just curious what they can use as a post spray. But also as a pre for next year, this one is there a single pre that could work on both crops. Well, I don't know what kind of wildflowers we're talking, but these are things that I would

55:13at least take a look at. Okay, so I'll give you a list of three different products you could consider. So we've got prene and pen demethylin. So basically they're both yellows. I don't think they're going to be labeled for you, but I don't know what wildflowers you've got. So prene, pen demethylin, pen demethylin is the active ingredient as a separate product. So prene, the active is trifluorlin. So trifluorlin, pen demethylin, and then this gallery product, check those out. And otherwise, I mean, it's clethidium, post-emerge typically. Otherwise plateau is something that it's possible that might be labeled in, I mean, for some of those wildflowers you've got. Now here's the other thing. If you say, well, I really, really want to get this grass out of there, then I might sacrifice some of the species of wildflowers. Yes, you might kill some, but if you leave some and then you don't have any grass in there,

56:14maybe that's acceptable to you. I don't know. But yeah, it's a tough deal because especially when you start talking about a number of different species that are out there, that's really hard. It's just like we talk all the time when people will write in or call in and they say, hey, I have a mixture out in my field of grass and alfalfa. What can I use for herbicide? There's not a lot that's going to be labeled on both of those when they're mixed together. So it's a real challenge. All right. Thanks for the question. This one comes in from Don. And he said, I'm wondering what rate of milestone herbicide I should use in a side-by-side tank sprayer to control thistles, locus sprouts, honey, suckle, a bunch of other invasives out in the pasture. And also wondering, should I include 240? I've got some young trees out there. So how volatile will this mix be? I'm going to spray this next spring outside of the human season in Illinois. Okay. So first of all, the rate on milestone that I want to run is seven ounces.

57:16I'm doing the sort of thing. It's just per acre. Right, per acre. But that's the whole problem. We don't know what you're putting on really through this sprayer. So I'm just shooting for seven ounces to the acre. You're going to have to figure that out. So that being a lot of trial and error. Yeah. An acre is 43,560 square feet, 43,560 square feet. So you could put some water in the tank, see how much water you put in and start spraying it out and see how many square feet you cover. That'd be one way you could figure it out. Or you could find out what spray nozzle you have, what the pounds per square inch of the pressure that your pump is putting out through that nozzle and what your ground speed is. And you could figure out how many acres that you're applying in a certain number of time. Most commonly we're seeing people put out about 15 gallons of water through these side by sides, but your nozzle could be different. You could be running faster or slower and putting on more or less. So I agree with Brian, you have to figure out how much you're putting out. Yeah. If you want to throw 240 and just make sure you're using free Lex, so it's not volatile.

58:18But as far as milestone or free Lex or 240, you're not going to kill the honeysuckle probably. You're probably going to need some triclip here, like Remedy would be the brand name. So that would be something I might consider, but Remedy kills trees and all of them. Milestone kills lots of different trees. You're going to have to look on the label so you don't kill the things you want to keep out in that area. Well, thanks for tuning in today and be sure to join us each weekday for more Ag PhD daily.