Farming Podcast | Calcium Deficiency in Crops | XtremeAg

00:00:00 Are your crops deficient in calcium? I'm guessing they are. My guests are gonna talk about that, how you can get calcium into your plants. 00:00:07 It's basically a how to guide for one of the most important micronutrients in your farming operation. 00:00:12 In this episode of extreme Ag, cutting the curve, It's extreme ag cutting the curve podcast, cutting your learning curve, 00:00:19 and improving your farming operation every week. This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is powered by Nature's bio kay technology delivering enhanced nutrient 00:00:28 cycling, greater plant health, and elevated stress mitigation leading to increased crop yields. 00:00:33 Visit nature's dot com. And now let's get ready to learn with your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:41 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ice Care, the curve. I got a great one for you. Today we're joined 00:00:45 by Nature's Tommy Roach, friend of the show, uh, awesome, uh, agronomic expert. 00:00:50 I called him that once in an episode of the Grain ring and a couple people like looked at and said, what? Anyway, he is, he's gonna talk to you about one 00:00:56 of the most important micronutrients that you probably are, uh, deficient in. Um, Kelly Garrett says he has never taken a sample on his 00:01:04 crops that was not deficient in zinc and in calcium. And it's not because his soil lacks calcium. We've, we've talked about this 00:01:10 before, at episodes up at his farm, the field right behind his house as buku amounts of calcium. That's a French word, which means a lot. 00:01:17 Anyway, he's got plenty of calcium, but getting it into the plant is the struggle. We've covered this in different, uh, angles. 00:01:25 We're gonna cover right now as a how to guide. We're gonna start off by telling you why calcium is important. 00:01:29 Why is calcium important, and why do plants struggle to get it into their system? Tommy Roach, 00:01:36 First off, a little correction. Calcium, last I checked is a, uh, macro or a prime or secondary nutrient, not a micronutrient. 00:01:46 Okay, just thought I'd get that outta the way. Kelly says there's actually four to five degrees, and we used to just say macro micro Kelly. 00:01:54 What do you say? You say that there's, there's the macros of all macro nitrogen, and then go from there. 00:02:00 There's a macro, you know, you have the major macro of nitrogen. This is how a farmer thinks it's incorrect, 00:02:05 but a farmer thinks you have nitrogen, then you have phosphorus and cows, uh, phosphorus and potassium, maybe sulfur. 00:02:13 Then the third level, you're gonna have sulfur, and they'll talk about boron, they'll talk about zinc. That's it. Then the fourth level is everything 00:02:21 else I have gotten. So I don't even like the term macro and micro, because the implication is that the macro is more important. 00:02:29 Yep. They are all important, and I would tell you, in my opinion, they're all equally important 00:02:33 because we we're leaving money on the table. We're not raising a good crop without them. I understand the macros, it takes more of them, 00:02:40 but, uh, to imply that they're more important, I really struggle with Yeah, that's that's a neat one. 00:02:45 Uh, because it does, it's almost like you diminish it by calling it a micro. Yes. But, you know, selenium is a micro to our bodies, 00:02:54 but I'm sure that if you don't have just the little dose that you need, then I 00:02:57 don't know, you get scurvy or something. I, I know I'm mix. I know I'm mixing things up there. Tommy, you don't really get scurvy from no selenium. 00:03:03 It's, I think it's a vitamin C issue. But anyway, let's get back to it. Thanks for me. Sounds good. What do you say, where does calcium fit in? 00:03:09 It's under NP and K. Where is it? Is it right there with sulfur? It's ironically we don't even talk much about calcium in 00:03:17 what I would call cmo commodity row crops, uh, corn, soybean, wheat. Yes. You hear about it in calcium, in, uh, cotton. 00:03:26 Matt talk about it. You hear about it in, uh, fruit and vegetable. I mean, apples commonly get bitter pit 00:03:34 because of lack of calcium. You get blossom in rot because of lack of calcium and tomatoes and peppers. 00:03:43 But unfortunately you really don't hear about it in cotton and soybean. Now, is it a problem? I think it is a problem, 00:03:51 and it's probably a, it's what I would call a hidden hunger. You don't see symptoms of deficiency, 00:03:58 but if you add more calcium or figure out how to get more in the plant, we see a, we see a benefit 00:04:07 Why plants need it. And then you, we already established that most crops are deficient in it. 00:04:13 Is that, is that accurate to say most crops are deficient in it? Uh, yes, In my opinion they are. Yeah. Yeah. 00:04:21 And Tommy has seen way more samples than I have, but in my opinion, they're, I mean, you, you wanna know why plants need it. 00:04:28 Of course, we all want strong cells in case of corn. Uh, that uses a lot of nitrogen. Uh, calcium and nitrogen go hand in hand when it, 00:04:39 when it goes to corn. And another micronutrient that is needed for calcium is boron. 00:04:47 You go to the world's largest calcium, uh, boron deposit in California, guess what comes along with the boron? 00:04:56 It's calcium. They ride together in nature and they ride together in the plant. All right. So we've talked about this before. Yeah. 00:05:04 Matt Miles says he's never taken a cotton sample that wasn't deficient in calcium, et cetera. Why is it so difficult to get calcium into the plant? 00:05:14 Well, so you need to go, I guess, to 1 0 1 and look how it travels or doesn't travel. Um, not very mobile in the soil travels by mass flow. 00:05:28 If you look at the current drought mon monitor or the NASA version, which is the, uh, grace, uh, shallow underwater index, you'll notice 00:05:42 that there's lots of areas in Nebraska, Kansas, Northern Missouri, Iowa, Northern Illinois that are the ugly shade of brown 00:05:54 and red, which is not very nice. So we're already starting out in large segment of the corn growing areas that are, are 00:06:04 You talking about the corns this color or the soil? Is this color? Whatcha talking about? The drought? Oh, okay. You're 00:06:09 Talking about the drought monitor map. The drought monitor. Well, I, I didn't, I didn't, I've never heard of a gray sheller index. 00:06:15 You're getting a little bit over my head here. That's the NASA version. Okay. There's, there's like the, the Nebraska, 00:06:21 which is the drought monitor, but then there's another one that's the grace, uh, shallow, yeah. 00:06:27 Soil, water, underground, whatever. Sure. Right. A lot of people would just refer to it as a drought mat, but thank you for trying to make me's. 00:06:32 It's one of those Texas, Texas tech things different. I wanna make you feel dumb because you don't know the gray shell drought map. 00:06:37 Drought map. Simplify. Got It. There we go. So we're already starting out in a somewhat of a dry pattern. 00:06:46 Yeah. And last time I checked you start out dry. It's not gonna get any better as we get into summer. It's important, 00:06:52 By the way, if you're, depending on when you're listening to this or watching this, we are recording this on June 2nd. 00:06:57 So by the time you hear this, the weather may be completely different. That still is not going to change the calcium thing, 00:07:02 which we're obvious is our main topic here. But Tom's Tommy's point is when we have drought conditions, what calcium uptake is even more of a challenge. 00:07:09 Is that what I'm gathering? Yep. I, I believe it is. So, so going back to base 1 0 1 facts, if we, 00:07:19 if we know calcium has a hard time moving in the soil, we know that it's already in drought conditions, then we have to use placement as a way 00:07:29 to get it into the plant or tag it along with, uh, different organic acids or other things that aid in plant uptake. 00:07:41 And I think that's what we're gonna get into right now. Alright. So what do we do to get calcium into the plant? You're saying boron and it ride together. 00:07:54 So is it simply a matter of making sure that I've got boron application? We know that, and Kelly 00:07:59 and I covered this at his place, you can throw more calcium out there that doesn't make the uptake. 00:08:05 It's not an issue of avail, it's not an issue of availability. It's an issue of uptake. Right? 00:08:10 Correct. To me, it's an issue of availability. It's not available in the soil. Calcium carries a double positive charge. 00:08:16 He and Tommy's correct. It's not mobile in the soil. The reason it's not mobile in the soil or available in the soil to, from my perspective, 00:08:24 my explanation is that it carries a double positive charge. It's a big, strong, aggressive ion 00:08:31 and it wants to get neutral and it ties up. And so to put it in this, so like, yeah, I can have 90% base saturation. 00:08:39 I can see a hill right over out this window, 90% base saturation calcium, and, but that's, that calcium is attached to the soil colloid. 00:08:47 It's not available to the plant. And I, uh, I can, I always struggle with that. Uh, why? And so every time we go across the field, 00:08:56 we're gonna add some micronutrients, we're gonna add calcium. You know, the, the idea, uh, that I need to split apply 00:09:02 or spoonfeed my nitrogen is a very foreign concept to me. I need to splitly and spoonfeed my micronutrients 00:09:08 because they, they're not available in the soil. The nitrogen is readily available in the soil. For me, Micros make, in my opinion, 00:09:18 'cause I've been doing micros for a long time, micros make the world go around and we talk about them being micronutrients, 00:09:25 but, uh, the vast majority of the time you can see a big influence in a small amount of micro than focusing just on 00:09:35 nitrogen or phosphorus. A hundred percent. Okay. So, so we talk about like, and we're learning this 00:09:42 with Johnny Verell who's doing reduced nitrogen applications, and Kelly, who's going crazy and cutting nitrogen application down to zero pounds 00:09:48 of applied nitrogen, et cetera, et cetera. But I didn't know until working with extreme Ag that only about 35%, one third 00:09:55 of applied nitrogen gets into the plant, which means we're wasting the whole boatload of stuff. Right? Is it that way on the micros too? 00:10:01 I mean, you say they're really important and they're generally under, uh, represented in the sampling. 00:10:05 Is it because we aren't, we, we don't think about 'em and we're not putting them out? Or is it just a matter of they're there 00:10:11 but they're not plant available? They're, they're, they're existing but not plant available. As far as my, my take on it, I don't think 00:10:21 people put out enough. Um, if you look at how people use dry fertilizer and they put in, uh, let's just say 20, 30 pounds 00:10:32 of zinc sulfate, um, is that plant root gonna find that those 20 pellets over a, over an acre? I completely, I completely agree. 00:10:44 The idea that we would use dry micros another foreign concept. To me, the idea that the root's gonna find 'em 00:10:49 and take 'em up, and if it does find them, that they're not tied up to something else. Total waste of money to me putting on dry micros. 00:10:56 So, by the way, that's a really interesting thing because there's somebody that's listening right up until now, and I hope to goodness they stayed on the episode 00:11:02 and didn't like click off and say, ah, yeah, put out more calcium. You know what, throwout dry calcium. 00:11:06 Because the point there is, it's, it's just, it's not, it's impossible. It's kinda like, yeah, a a as you say, 2020 pebbles 00:11:16 of something across an acre, it's, it's 40 feet from the nearest plant. Exactly. So the reason or the plant 00:11:22 Is 40 feet away from the nearest pebble, I guess is the right way to say it. Most everybody, the only reason they're putting out 00:11:27 calcium is to adjust pH. What, which is the total incorrect thing to do as well. I, the total lack 00:11:34 of understanding in the agricultural community, uh, from, I apologize, Tommy from retailers. 00:11:39 Oh, no. P pH is not the problem. Everybody wants to affect the pH as if, if we affect the pH, we're gonna correct everything. 00:11:48 The pH is a symptom of a nutritional imbalance. Correct. The nutritional imbalance 00:11:54 and the pH will fall line, stop trying to correct the pH. Correct the nutritional imbalance. 00:12:01 Interesting. And by the way, there's a whole bunch of people that came up getting their, uh, you know, agronomy from FFA 00:12:06 or v*g class, whatever that were told that, you know, if PHSB, what, 6.6 or whatever, 6.4 to 6.8 or whatever it's supposed to be, and 00:12:14 that'll take care of a whole bunch of stuff. It doesn't. No. Well, well generally if the pH is in that area, 00:12:20 things are going to be nice. But the reason things are nice is because you have nutritional balance. 00:12:24 Balance, All right. It's, You're looking at things from the wrong angle. Alright, So you're about the Tommy Roachs talked about the drought 00:12:32 map, and that makes a lot of sense. We're not gonna go in about the, what, what the drought map is called. 00:12:37 It's called a drought map. And then, uh, and then we just talked about pH does Lyme. In other words, if I have the correct amount of ly, 00:12:46 you're saying that, that people view that as a calcium application when it really it's not Yes. Sort of 00:12:55 Yes. Because if I, like, if I go people here where I live, everybody talks about putting on Lyme and correcting the pH and things like that. 00:13:03 High pH for me is a much bigger problem than low pH. Yes. Now I know it's that thought that way all across the nation. 00:13:09 Okay. And then when people go put on Lyme, you know what? Lyme, they go put on the Lyme that is closest to 'em 00:13:15 because it's the least expensive. Right. You know what the exact wrong Lyme to put on the Lyme, that's the closest to you 00:13:20 because the dysfunction that's in your soil is the same dysfunction that's in that lime. So you're probably potentially making the problem worse. 00:13:27 You're definitely not helping the problem. We did that, by the way, that's one of the best episodes we've ever done is with Kevin Matthews 00:13:33 and he said, your nearest lime source is probably your worst lime source. And we covered that in an episode. It's a good episode. 00:13:37 Uh, is this matter about, okay, you talked about the drought. Does it matter with soil type Tommy Roach? 00:13:41 Does it matter if I've got, if, if I've got Kelly's soil versus Chad soil? Is this calcium thing, is it a different nut 00:13:48 to crack based on soil type? Calcium is calcium and it's hard to deal with, uh, whether it's formulating wise in a, in a NPK fertilizer, 00:13:59 which is what I do, or if it's getting it in the plant, it's, it's a booger and there's different ways to do it. Um, you can, if you look at what calcium 00:14:12 products they're on the market market, and I'm talking liquid, how most people try to trick it up to help plant uptake is 00:14:22 to add amino acids to it, to add organic acids to it, which would be fulvic or something like that. Add sugars, which could be liano, uh, lignano sulfonate 00:14:35 glucco hep inate, or, which is the route we've taken since we're basic in potassium acetate, is we've gone the route of 00:14:47 already having a reacted product called calcium acetate. And we know the benefits of acetate 00:14:53 or many, uh, the basic carbon building block in nature. So we tag that along with calcium to help it, uh, get into the plant better, whether it's soil applied 00:15:06 or folio applied. And if there note, um, we at XT Extreme Ag sat in a hotel suite in Denver and had an entire presentation by Mr. Roach about acetates. 00:15:20 And I never felt so much like the slow kid in the back of the classroom as I did that day. I still, actually, I gotta be honest with you, 00:15:27 I'm still am a little bit lost on the whole acetate thing. I didn't raise my hand because I was like the slow kid 00:15:32 and I didn't want to ask too many questions because then like Temple or somebody I like say, shut up slow kid. 00:15:38 You know, you're getting in the way anyway. You know how that goes around here. Well, was it because you had two beers in both 00:15:42 hands and you couldn't raise your hand? No. Well That was probably part of it too. Anyway. That's why I came, frankly. All right. 00:15:47 I wanna remind you if your farm operation's growing and I hope that it is, um, and, uh, you're getting growth as a farmer, I want you 00:15:54 to think about the challenges that you face and how superior grain equipment's grain storage systems can help you. 00:15:58 Superior grain system, uh, grain equipment's, uh, grain storage systems are built to make your job easier and help your grain reach its full potential from things 00:16:06 like their gentle mix flow dryers to the durable storage. You can get the flexibility 00:16:09 to market your grain on your time. You can visit with the experts at Superior Grain at this year's Farm Progress show in Decatur, Illinois. 00:16:16 Or you can visit them online anytime@superiorbins.com. That's superior bins.com. Um, what about then the regionality of it? 00:16:24 Climatological, you said calcium's calcium, you said soil doesn't matter. What about temperatures? Is it, is it a harder fight 00:16:30 for Matt down in little Vietnam than it is for Lee up in South Dakota? Or is it temperature not matter? 00:16:35 Well, anytime you have hotter temperatures, plant tends to shut down and doesn't wanna take up anything. So Matt has a much shorter window, uh, to hit that 00:16:46 during the day than say Lee does in South Dakota. Got it. Or even Salmon Canada. Yeah. And crops are different. 00:16:56 I mean, cotton plant needs, uh, a lot more calcium to fill out that bowl and fiber than, um, 00:17:07 and I'm not saying that it's not needed, but soybean doesn't take a lot of calcium at all. I mean, if you look at, if you look at all the nutrients, 00:17:17 calcium is the least that, uh, that is needed by a soybean plant. So What needs it the most? You said 00:17:24 cotton Cotton needs it the most Out of traditional world. Crops. Crops. Um, I would say cotton does. Yes. 00:17:31 And corn. Yep. Got it. Um, alright. We said we're talking about balance. And this has been Kelly's big thing. 00:17:39 Three years ago, Kelly's big thing was stress mitigation. Then he is moved into, uh, 00:17:43 crop balance was a big thing a couple of years ago. Now he's moved into more about nutrient analysis of the, of the crops he grows. 00:17:49 But your thing was balanced just a couple years ago and you mentioned it already today. And then Kel uh, well, Tommy said something about boron. 00:17:57 Um, what, what is it that I need to be thinking if I'm listening to the show about balance? How, where am I probably imbalanced If I'm a normal American 00:18:05 farmer, where am I? Probably Im balance that's harming me on calcium uptake. Um, I would say 00:18:15 that you probably have more nitrogen than you need and you're lacking all nutrients, including calcium. But calcium is, as Tommy said before, a booger to work with. 00:18:24 And I think a lot of times it gets left out or skipped over in a foliar plan because of the difficulty of working with it. 00:18:32 And there just aren't very many products that you can mix with other micros. 00:18:37 I think all of them, again, uh, the general farmer, I believe across the Midwest has, is out of balance. They're heavy nitrogen and the deficient micros, 00:18:47 but the micros they do address are not calcium isn't among them because of the difficulty in working with it. And so you need to find a product that you can mix, 00:18:57 because we're not gonna add a pass. No farmer's gonna go out and put on their zinc and bore on and maum and then, and then come back 00:19:03 and make another pass with calcium. They're not gonna do that. And that's the reason that it, that's the reason that it is the oftentimes 00:19:10 the most left out one. He's the only guy in that entire Garrett land and cattle farm office who can say the word molybdenum. 00:19:17 His agronomist, who is a very intelligent guy with calibrated agronomy. My friend Mike Evans just keeps saying Molly, 00:19:23 and then finally said, what, what's that short for? He can't say molybdenum. Why is it so hard? Tommy, He's from Iowa. 00:19:36 What's the deal on balance that, from your perspective, that I wanna talk about the how-to guide on how I actually get more calcium in plants. 00:19:42 What's, what's the imbalance issue that causes the, the, the, the calcium to be so difficult to work with? 00:19:49 Me or Tommy? Tommy Roach said the boron thing. Well, let's take, let's take Kelly's example. I mean his, his two most limiting nutrients, 00:19:56 calcium and zinc. How, how many people? We've already talked about how many people apply calcium, which I would, 00:20:04 I would probably say no. Almost zero. I think Kelly's the only one almost zero in a, in a corn soybean rotation. 00:20:12 Uh, I just, I just don't think they pay enough attention to anything other than nitrogen. 00:20:18 Yeah. Phosphorus, sulfur. I mean, they don't even pay attention to potassium. They, the ones that do deal with it the wrong way, 00:20:25 they throw out dry pot ash and think that's solving a problem. All right. Uh, how to guide part of it. 00:20:32 How do you get calcium into your crops? We did a short video about this in the field behind your, uh, shop Kelly. 00:20:39 Um, if I remember, is that the one where we, we used, you did an experiment with your subsurface drip irrigation. I, I think, am I right about that? 00:20:48 Yeah, well, we, uh, we've tried to put it into the subsurface drip. We, it's the, the only fertility that is left on my planter, 00:20:55 uh, in the inferral mix is calcium and zinc. Uh, and then when we're going across the field in a foliar application, you know, the post chem, we'll have, uh, 00:21:05 calcium in it amongst the other micros. And then when we get to the R stages, you know, and we're taking the rapid soil test 00:21:11 and the SAP test, uh, I can't guarantee that calcium would be in there, but I bet you it will be because it's always one that we need 00:21:18 to spoonfeed, uh, consistently. So we, we are, it's planner applied and then fully applied with the sprayer 00:21:25 and then the airplane, I might put calcium on potentially five times throughout the year. 00:21:30 Planter, planter, the sprayer, and the post cam. And there's the potential to fly the plane three times. And when you're flying a plane three times, 00:21:37 which is getting expensive, that's a fungicide pass. And what else? Uh, so let, let's address that. 00:21:44 I don't wanna call it a fungicide pass Because you, you're trying to back off of fungicides anyhow. 00:21:48 If I, if I balance my crop, yeah. I'm not, I'm not saying fungicides are bad. I'm saying fungicides are defense. 00:21:54 And if, if I do a good job and get balanced in the plant, I don't believe that I'll need the fungicide because the 00:22:00 plant will be healthy enough. It'll have natural immunity. So if we balance the plant, 00:22:05 so then you wanna talk about the expense fungicide is $30 an acre. I've turned my nitrogen down, uh, 40%. 00:22:13 I've turned, you know, I've, uh, um, I continue to turn down the nutrients. I will tell you that I, I'm raising corn cheaper. 00:22:21 Uh, last year we had those challenge plots at Matt Miles because it was said that I could do, I could do 00:22:26 what I do here in Iowa 'cause of the soil, but I can't do it anywhere else. So we raised, uh, 00:22:30 challenge plots at Matt's for his field day. Matt raised 240 bushel corn. I raised 240 bushel corn. I did it $50 cheaper. Cheaper. 00:22:39 Don't tell me it's more expensive. You're nodding your head, Tommy. It's the people that are driving a tractor right now. 00:22:44 They can't listen to you. Nod. Why are you nodding? You just like the idea that did something better than Matt is that it, 00:22:50 It goes back to people pay too much attention to nitrogen, they put out too much, uh, 00:22:56 which throws everything out of balance. So tell, well, uh, Kelly just said I put it on as much as five times. 00:23:04 Somebody's listening to saying, oh, I don't even go over my field that many times. Well, if you don't have a sophisticated planter, 00:23:10 can you still put calcium on that time of planting? I'm assuming you can. You can. If you could use, you could use, there's 00:23:18 Different, it be two by two or in furrow technology to do that. There's different, there's different products you can use. 00:23:23 I mean, if you're gonna, if a lot of people run phosphorus in a, in a infer or two by two, the, if you are trying to 00:23:33 mix calcium in with phosphorus, it has got to be a hundred percent chelate, which limits it to a calcium A DTA. 00:23:42 Now if you're not using phosphorus, like Kelly's not, uh, that leaves your options a little bit wider. You could use, um, products that are 00:23:55 may maybe amino acid based or acetate based because calcium acetate and phosphorus don't even, don't even think about it. 00:24:05 'cause they will make calcium phosphate, which is goes back to natural state. You know what you want. So, but they're, they're not, 00:24:12 they're not antagonistic. They just freeze each other up. Tag each other up. Yeah, Exactly. They want 00:24:16 to go back to how they were in nature. Calcium phosphate. Alright, so the person that says, I wanna be 00:24:22 to put on more calcium because I just heard it from Kelly that I can put it on, I can figure out a way 00:24:26 to do it even if I don't have in furrow or two by two. How do I do it that way? Planter box, seed treatment. I don't know. What are we talking about? 00:24:32 Well, you can fully your apply it. I mean if you look at nutrient uptake and in corn, the vast majority of calcium is needed. 00:24:40 And that we'll just say VV 12 to R two. I mean it's directly tied to starch accumulation, nitrate uptake. 00:24:52 Mm. I mean at that, at that V 12, you're putting on a lot of cells and you've got to have calcium of boron 00:24:59 for cell stability. One of those things that's getting flown on Kelly is what it's, it's what's in it, what's in the stuff 00:25:05 that goes on at, you're talking July, August, August probably. What are you putting on? Oh, like last year on July 12th there was copper, uh, 00:25:15 copper, manganese, iron, boron, calcium, zinc, you know, and then there's uh, some biological products, things like that. 00:25:23 It, uh, it depends on what the SAP test tells us is needed and then in what amounts. 00:25:27 Okay. And then the person that says, I don't know if I can justify the expense to fly something on, uh, 00:25:32 late in the season like that, you're gonna tell 'em We are reallocating that fungicide spend. We're reallocating some pesticide spend. 00:25:40 We are reallocating some nitrogen spend. Uh, we've taken all fertility off the planter. There are many people that put 00:25:47 phosphorus on with the planter. We were one of them throughout extensive trials. We took all of that f fertility off the planter 00:25:53 and reallocated it to later in the season. If you would like to know my opinion on what in my soil, what phosphorus on the planter produces it's vegetation. 00:26:01 It's not yield, it produces vegetation. What I put on with the airplane later in the season produces yield re I'm not telling you should spend more money. 00:26:09 I just showed you where I spent $50 an acre less. Yep. Reallocate that spend to later in the season. You have to educate yourself on 00:26:18 what your soil's producing, things like that. Uh, just yesterday there was a coffee shop conversation and they said, well, we think you're crazy 00:26:25 that you turned your nitrogen down that far. It takes 1.1 pounds of nitrogen to produce a bush of corn. And I'm like, I never said it didn't. 00:26:32 Well, why do you think you need to put it all out there? Your soil's providing some of it for free. 00:26:36 Why don't you take advantage of that and then reallocate that savings to that airplane pass. Yeah, I like it. 00:26:43 How do you manage what you don't measure? Nobody's measuring what the soil's providing. Nobody's measuring what the plant needs. 00:26:50 How do you manage what you don't measure? And then they want to tell me that the SAP test is too expensive. 00:26:54 You might spend $30 an acre on a foliar app and I could go, I could go run one SAP test for $110 or whatever. 00:27:01 It's that an 80 acre field time serves $2,400 you're gonna spend in the application on this field. 00:27:06 And you think it's too expensive to take $110 test to validate what we need to put out there. Tommy, I'm kind of surprised he even even 00:27:13 stopped in the coffee shop. I, I, I mean, why, why go there to get judged But turn's chest? 00:27:20 Uh, all right. Um, I I, I had one of my things in my question. How do you know it's working? Well, you did 00:27:25 the tissue sample test. Um, again, the person that says I need to put more calcium in you, you did it through testing. 00:27:31 Do you think that most people would just do well to figure out a way to get a foliar pass on calcium even if they didn't do the testing? 00:27:36 'cause you can just almost blank it. Tell 'em, I'm just going to 90% chance you're deficient. Yes, I do think that they would be doing well to just try 00:27:46 and see what the yield is at the end. But in the tight margin environment that we're in and things like that, I, I always wanna measure it to see, 00:27:54 you know, like last year though, that the July 12th application that I referenced, we put on 20 ounces of a 6% copper 00:28:02 and we moved the sample, the SAP sample, we moved the copper like 2000%. We probably don't need to do that. 00:28:09 We probably could dial that back to 10 ounces of copper. You know what I mean? Something like that. 00:28:12 So we use that SAP test, actually calibrate the pot product. We, we moved the, uh, potassium up 00:28:19 and this was at like vt, give or take. Okay? So we are super excited that we actually moved the potassium up 1.4%. 00:28:27 I would rather, you know, and the co that copper spend isn't a lot of money, but when we get down to the really, the nuts 00:28:33 and bolts of it, what if we have the expense on the copper and add a little bit more to potassium to try 00:28:38 to even raise that a little bit more? And so I always believe that the SAP test is worth it to really dial in on what we're doing. 00:28:47 Mistakes is my last thought here, by the way. You want any, anything to conclude that Tommy? I don't. Well, no. 00:28:53 And all these, this discussion about other nutrients, it all fits in with, with this calcium topic. 'cause I don't think people understand that calcium 00:29:07 activates a, uh, proton protein pump that pumps all these nutrients into the plant. That being phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, 00:29:21 magnesium, boron. You go right down the list and without available potassium, guess what? You limit your limit, your nutrient uptake 00:29:30 of all these other nutrients that we've been sitting here talking about. You said without available 00:29:34 potassium or you mean available calcium? Available Calcium. Yeah, There we go. That's the top, that's 00:29:38 the topic is calcium. I know mistakes that, uh, someone is trying to get more calcium plants, 00:29:44 they understand they got this problem and then the one thing that they're like, oh crap, I wish that I'd have known because have you ever made a mistake, 00:29:51 Kelly, that, so that in your attempt, in your effort to get calcium into your plants, have you spent some money that didn't end up giving you a return? 00:30:02 Yes. If you don't apply, you know what in soybeans when we didn't apply at the right time, you know, we, because we're trying to save that pass, 00:30:08 things like that, you know, in corn, uh, like the, the calcium that we were using was about eight bucks an acre. 00:30:14 Uh, this was a couple years ago. We had a 10 bushel yield gaining corn. Uh, and that was in a 300 bushel yield environment. 00:30:21 So a 10 bushel move in a 300 bushel environment is a big move that was on irrigated acres. 00:30:26 Okay. Um, in beans we had a three bushel, uh, move. So in B $8 beans is a pretty pedestrian price and I always want to have a three to one return 00:30:38 and we had a three do three bushel return there. And then, but then like the cells that Tommy talks about, you know, the cellular strength in very high yielding beans, 00:30:47 if we don't have the cellular strength, the the, they have a hard time supporting themselves. Yep. And, uh, so the calcium in an indirect way can lead 00:30:55 to an even bigger yield gain there just, just by, uh, supporting the plant better. Most of the calcium that a soybean needs is in the stems 00:31:04 and stems and leaves. It's not in the, the actual bean itself. So It does need to be applied for vegetative 00:31:10 because one of Kelly's big points is you can do a whole bunch of stuff that creates vegetation, but it doesn't create yield. 00:31:14 Like that's why he said he's taken stuff off of the planter creating a bunch of vegetation. Uh, you're just spending money at the wrong time. 00:31:21 And we were, when we're talking beans, I mean, it, it is, i i I would love to deal almost 100% with 00:31:30 in season fertility because you can, you can greatly enhance your beam production just by doing everything say our stage forward. 00:31:45 Got it. All right. So if you wanna learn more about this, go and check out a couple of videos. 00:31:49 These guys did one and then also Kelly and I have done one. And then I know Matt has talked about calcium. 00:31:54 So we've covered calcium quite a bit, but we're covering it quite a bit because it's that important to your farming operation. 00:31:59 If you wanna take your farming operation to the next level, make sure you come to one of our field days. 00:32:03 We are recording this early June. I don't know when you're gonna listen to it, but maybe you're gonna hear this in time to go to 00:32:07 Matt Miles, which is on June 12th. June 26th. We're gonna be in northwest Iowa at Kelly Garrett's farm. 00:32:12 Great time, always there. Um, you can go to the Extreme Mag Farm website and sign up for any of our field days. 00:32:17 They're free to attend and we would love to have you there, but you do have to register in August. 00:32:22 We're gonna be at Verres on August 5th, that's in Jackson, Tennessee. On August 7th, we're gonna be in 00:32:26 North Carolina at Kevin Matthews. August 20, uh, I'm sorry, August, uh, 15th. We're going to go across the border. That's right. 00:32:33 We're gonna go up there to what might be our 51st state. We're gonna go up there and we're gonna check out 00:32:38 our friend at Sam CHUs. It's not really gonna be our 51st date. Uh, we're gonna go to Quebec for the first time ever 00:32:43 with extreme ag for the field day at Sam CHUs. And then on August 21st we wrap things up at our friend temples in, uh, in, in Maryland. 00:32:50 So go to the Extreme ag.farm. If you, while you're at the Extreme ag.farm website, make sure you check out our show. 00:32:54 The Grainery, our very first sponsored shows we're sponsored by none other than our friend Tommy with Nature's. 00:33:00 And it's a really cool show. Pull up a chair, it's real farm talk with real people about real issues from 00:33:05 the personal to the professional. If you wanna learn more about Mr. Tommy Roach and their lineup of products 00:33:09 that can help you farm better, where do they go? natures.com. Nature's dot com. N-A-C-U-H-N-A-C-H-U-R-S natures.com. 00:33:18 So next time, that's Kelly Garrett, that's Tommy Roach. We're talking about how to get more calcium into your plants. 00:33:22 I heard a lot of it there. Do stuff at time of planning multiple. You can't put it out all at once. 00:33:26 Five different applications from Kelly Garrett, small doses, and all of a sudden keeps your plants not deficient. 00:33:31 Is that what I heard? Is what I heard. Right, Kelly? You heard 90 plus percent chance you are deficient in calcium. 00:33:38 Pull some samples to see if maybe we're right and we probably are. And we can help you farm better. So next time. 00:33:43 Thanks for being here. I'm Damien Mason with extreme Ag cutting the curve. That's a wrap for this episode 00:33:47 of Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve Podcast. Make sure to check out extreme ag.com for more great content. 00:33:53 Cutting. The curve is powered by Nature's bio. Kay. Check out natures.com to learn more about how Bio Kay can improve your farm's. 825 00:34:01.605 --> 00:34:02.045