Farming Podcast | Fertilizer for Soybeans & 30-Inch Rows

00:00:00 The learning continues in 2025. We're talking to Chad Henderson about the field that he's gonna have in Mass, Alabama in May of 2025 00:00:06 and why you should be there. It's extreme ag cutting the curve podcast, cutting your learning curve, 00:00:12 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 00:00:21 cycling, greater plant health, and elevated stress mitigation leading to increased crop yields. 00:00:26 Visit natures.com. And now let's get ready to learn with your host Damien Mason. Hey there, we're up to another 00:00:34 fantastic episode of the Cutting. The Curves gonna be a nice short sweet one here for previewing all the field days. 00:00:39 We're doing seven field days at Extreme Ag. That's right. Chad Henderson is gonna have his, he's the first one 00:00:43 to kick off in May. Yeah, we're doing a May 22nd field day because then you can see stuff at a different stage. 00:00:48 He's in Madison, Alabama, just west of Huntsville and he's, uh, always got some cool stuff to share. He is gonna tell you about some of 00:00:54 the cool things he's doing. Uh, uh, it is not just about the field day, it's some of the cool stuff he's doing. 00:00:59 Obviously he's one of the descendant twins. He, he loves to push it and push the envelope and so he is always doing that. 00:01:04 So we also are going to be going from there. We've got June field days. We're gonna be at Matt Miles farm, June 13th. 00:01:10 We're gonna be, uh, 12th. I'm sorry, on the 26th. We're gonna be in Iowa. Then August we're gonna be all over the place. 00:01:15 We're gonna be at Johnny lls August 5th. We're gonna be August 7th at Kevin Matthews. August 15th. We're gonna be in Canada August 21st. 00:01:23 We're gonna be at Temple Roads First field. Dan Boring one right there. What's that first field day? 00:01:27 Chad might even be joining me in Canada. I'm gonna go up there. We're gonna learn how to speak French 'cause we're gonna be in Quebec anyway. 00:01:32 Chad, who's coming to your field day? So we're gonna have spray tech there. We're gonna have nature's there. 00:01:38 Agri liquid's gonna be there. Um, concept Agri tech's gonna be there. Uh, a DS tile's gonna be there. 00:01:45 So this field day will not be on a trial tile field. Say that five times. This Trial will trial will not be on a tiled field. 00:01:54 That's right. It will not. But a DS will be there. We'll be able to take you if you need to see lift stations or you need to see tile, you know, in action, 00:02:01 how we're doing it with lift stations, then we'll be able to cart you over there and take you to that. 00:02:04 So that's what they'll see. Uh, constant AgTech will be represented here. They wanted to make sure they sowed their face. 00:02:09 We've got some of that product going on. And then the ones that'll be in the field day far as having crops, there will be agro liquid. 00:02:16 We will be doing soybeans. So we're gonna have a soybean trial. It's a competition type trial I think between several 00:02:22 of 'em teaming up together. Uh, don't get me quoting the teams, but anyway, it's going to be, we're got 30 inch beans. 00:02:28 So we have the availability to wide drop these beans was just something that mm people do but don't do you know, so We'll, when's 00:02:35 The last time you did 30 inch beans? I did a few last year. I think it was last year. I did a few 30 inch beans. 00:02:40 You know, just trying to, we're we're, we're looking at putting the fertility later, not putting any fertility up front. 00:02:46 And then running the fertility later in our stages is what kind of what we're looking at. Let's talk about soybeans. 00:02:50 'cause most soybeans right now, I assume are planted on fifteens. So I'm old enough to remember when they were planted on 30 00:02:55 inch rows because you had to go out and do a, run a cultivator through the field about four times. 00:02:59 Yeah. Yeah. Before roundup. Before the before, yeah. I have to say. And then also walking beans. We had to go out there with a weed hook or a machete. 00:03:07 So then we went to drilled beans and you called drilling once a controlled spill. Uh, and then we went to 15 inch. Now we're going to 30. 00:03:15 Do you think that 30 inch soybeans are gonna be the next thing? Because you can reduce population. They bush out. 00:03:20 Is that one of, is that where this goes? No, no. I mean, in, in my, in my trials, you know, it don't, it ain't a hill of beans difference. 00:03:28 You like that hill of beans. That's what you mean. A hill of beans. Difference in fifteens and thirties before you plant 'em to a certain date. 00:03:36 I've seen people make real good beans on 15 temple does. I've seen people make real good beans on 00:03:41 thirties, 30 eights. Look at Matt. Matt's twin rows. 31 or two inches is what it stands out. So, and when you plant 'em early, 00:03:48 I just hadn't seen that work. You make it work with equipment you've got, or the fertility you plant on putting in place. 00:03:53 Now when you start pushing back, let's say in my area after in May when you start getting into May, May 10th, 15th, 20th, that's when you start closing them rows up. 00:04:03 We get down to twenties and fifteens because I've tried to do it. I wanted to do it on double crops 00:04:08 because I've got a, I could run a 60 foot planter, run one planter, you know, 2000 acres a wheat and get the job done. 00:04:15 But the times I trough it before in the, when we're talking about planting June to mid-July, man, it's, it's four 00:04:22 or five to eight bushel difference in thirties and fifteens. Or 20, tell Me a minute. You double 00:04:27 crop, you and Matt call 'em wheat beans 'cause you're taking your wheat off and you're usually doing that in June 00:04:32 and then you're planting your soybeans in there and you need to be, uh, tighter planting. And that's really just about conservation of moisture. 00:04:39 Yep. You, you just can't get enough beans. I mean I had up to 190,000 beans out there. You just can't get 'em. 00:04:44 They're just not enough beans out there to do what you need to do. Okay. So it's not about, it's not about, 00:04:48 I thought you wanted of TERs for shading sunlight. It's sunlight. It's sunlight. Okay. All right. So anyway, so then let's skip on. 00:04:54 That's what agro liquids will be and it is gonna be fun. It's gonna be a good time. It's gonna be real simple too. 00:04:59 It'll be foer passes, kind of what you're gonna do. Nothing is different with the planters. And then we'll make foer passes, see who's what. 00:05:06 And then we're gonna replicate this now early and then we'll come back and we're gonna replicate it in the double crops as well. 00:05:11 So there'll be a kind of a times two on that deal. Um, but you will see 30 inch beans planted and uh, aquid program. 00:05:19 Got It. The next thing we got is the Nature's program with Tommy. So nature's wanting to, they've got a couple of trips there. 00:05:27 I think it's 48 rows they've got in this field day. That's standard practice grower, standard practice. And then nature's practice, well they've got 00:05:34 that in strip teed and in conventional ground. So you'll get to see a little bit of each and what the practice changed 00:05:40 or didn't change versus strip tilled versus none. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I got you on that. So that's our natures. And so wait a minute. We're doing 00:05:49 the only experiment is going with the same treatment, same fertility. It's just a matter of strip till, no strip till, 00:05:55 Strip till, no strip till. And then also they'll change from Tommy's program to other one. 00:06:01 And and also what we're looking at here, we're not looking, I mean we're looking at yield. We're always looking at yield, but we're also looking at 00:06:06 a fertilizer efficiency. You know, the one side here has strip till fertility on it. The other side has um, two ton of chicken litter. 00:06:14 So we're looking at efficiency rates as well. 'cause you know, today the do it is more about how can I save a dollar and maintain yield. 00:06:20 Yeah. So keep that in mind on this field day. Is it save a dollar? Maintain yield? Where are we gonna cut a corner and not cut yield? 00:06:27 Yeah, I guess if you had to name my field day, it's cutting the corner without cutting the yield, you know. So then we go into spray text 00:06:33 and there's is gonna have, they're gonna have beans and corn spray. Tech is, so I've got corn 00:06:38 and then I've got 32 rows of soybeans in the middle of the corn field. And I think dad just figured that out. 00:06:43 Like he drove by and he said, did you know there's some beans up there on the hill? Just a few rows of them, you know. Okay. 00:06:48 So I was like, oh man, he finally, he figured it out. Like what are we doing them beans up there in the middle of cornfield. 00:06:54 So cutting the corner without cutting the yield. I like it. So what we're talking about also is obviously controlling expenses. 00:06:59 And so, uh, last year Temple did a big thing where he didn't use any dry fertility. And then our fertility, our fertility companies, uh, 00:07:06 put together packages where he could just do that. Are you, are you making big huge swings on anything? Are you cutting out anything to control costs? 00:07:15 Oh, that's when we get into what we started talking about. That's when we get into the good stuff. 00:07:20 So we jump down here in front of my house after we talk about the spray tech programs of So beans, the spray tech produces of corn and Nature's agro liquid. 00:07:28 We talk about What'd, what'd You say you're doing for spray tech? Spray tech is gonna be the one that's what 00:07:32 The spray tech's gonna be. Corn and beans. And then, and it's, and We're gonna focus a lot on health. 00:07:37 You know, spray tech has cube, they have the boron that we've been using. They have uh, the adjuvant 00:07:43 and we're really gonna focus on plant health in that. Uh, we'll be putting on cube at a couple different times and you know, that's something 00:07:50 and we really wanna land on to their K product. You know, they have a K product. We also, we use a lot of bio K from Nature's, you know, 00:07:57 we use a lot of that, the O 24. But when you get into a thing where it's logistics is your main deal 00:08:02 and you can't put another tow on the truck, they have a K product that's four ounces of acre. So let's see how that works in comparison to some 00:08:09 of these other K products where we have to put on half a gallon to a gallon an acre. Got it. So by the way, you like the spray tech stuff 00:08:16 'cause that's the one, the first time I was at your farm, we talked about it because it's the, the, the one 00:08:20 of the easiest to use products, right? It's got, it's, it's, it comes in the package. All you gotta do is open it up and dump it 00:08:25 in and you don't have to just Dump it in it, do everything, anything you want. No, Very little me very little measure 00:08:32 Mean, you mean you gotta add some excitement to this because it's almost like when they first started out and we're doing this, the same old, same old. 00:08:37 It's like, I like it, I like it, you know, It's like, what are we doing? So then we're gonna get out here to front of my house. 00:08:45 That's where the field day gonna be. Like it. Wait a minute. See about what you just said is ours are not boring field days. 00:08:50 I can tell you, I already told the listener where we are, we're gonna be uh, it's not boring. It's not boring. 00:08:55 It's not boring. It's not boring. We're gonna have some, you know, you've seen some stuff on the internet out there on Facebook about skip row corn, 00:09:01 you know, people trying to skip row corn. We got skip row corn. It's growing. Like it's up and gone like checked out. 00:09:06 Alright, so we gonna look at, we're looking at different seeding rates on it. Um, can you make the same, does it make sense? 00:09:13 Talk about the cover crop people. I didn't do it this time, but let's say a cover crop guy wants to plant in there and have a 60 inch 00:09:19 middle cover crop in it. I mean, there's a whole lot of avenues and we're just showing people the yield of it, 00:09:24 what it looks like, how you'd cut your planter off. Hey, you'd set your planter up to do this and kind of efficiency of it 00:09:30 because can we take it at 30 inch rows and plant it at 32,000? Mm Can we figure out we're missing that one row 00:09:37 and say add 16,000 to this row and 16,000 to this row and pick up this population. Because when you say 30,000 seeds to the acre Yep. 00:09:45 That acre don't know if it's on one row or 20 rows. Right? Right, right, Right. So we saw 00:09:48 this, I saw it for the first time at Johnny Verell's last year. So you're using the same, you don't, 00:09:52 you don't save anything on seed. You're using the same population. The idea is it creates more light. 00:09:57 Yep. Yep. Creates more light. It's better standability if that makes any sense at all. I've seen it at 48,000 stand up 00:10:04 where the other wouldn't stand up at 36,000. Yeah. So that's an interesting, so Do you think you'll and when it make more, I I doubt it. 00:10:12 I very serious. I mean, Donnie, Johnny's seen a big bump. Johnny's been doing this several years. 00:10:16 There's people, there's people all over the country. I mean, you get out toward Galen's way. Yeah. You know, and you get out that way in Oklahoma and, 00:10:22 and those areas, I mean these people have been doing this. They, they're growing great corn at 12,000. 00:10:26 I mean these, these, this is not, this is not changing. We ain't changing anything, changing the world or nothing, you know. But when 00:10:32 You say, like, like you said, we're Galen is on in the panhandle, Oklahoma, that's purely about moisture. 00:10:37 You don't really have a moisture problem where you are. I always got a moisture problem. We're three days away from a drought, 00:10:43 but we're doing this under irrigation. Okay. You see what the limit is? See if we can put on two ears at 48,000. 00:10:49 Let's see what it changes. What it don't change. Let's just look At it. All right. Then you 00:10:53 got one other thing you're doing that's kind of cool besides the skip road. Do you do something about you? You uh, 00:10:56 do you do one other thing with corn? I think you told me before we hit record. No. Uh, across the road from the house we got 00:11:02 some corn planted in a circle. Like a pivot. See that ain't nothing new either. They do that, been doing that in 00:11:07 Texas since they had pivots. Well, It's new to me 'cause I've never seen circular planning. Uh, that adds a little bit. 00:11:12 And we'll talk about, we'll talk about the way we went about planting it, how we set the planter up to do it, you know, what not to do because I hit a ab line 00:11:18 and hit the button on a circle track and then I turn around and hit the button in the wrong spot. 00:11:22 And I'm telling you, it will straighten up the curve. So just know that you can mess up a curtain because I did. Alright, so, so the point is, 00:11:29 autosteer doesn't work when you're planting a corn in a circle. It works, but you gotta hit the button in the right spot. 00:11:34 Okay. All Right. 'cause if you hit it short, it just straightens up from their own all. Why, why do they plant, why do they 00:11:39 plant corn in a circle? Why do We plant it like that? So the reason that we planted it like this is because we're gonna do some testing on water quality. 00:11:46 Mm-hmm. So we talked about with, um, with the guys from Nephem, it's Nephem, right? Or is it Nephem subs Drip irrigation? Yes. Yeah, 00:11:56 So we talked to the guys, well we talked to the guys from Nephem and we talk about bicarbonate, bio bicarbonate 00:12:03 Drip, neutral Drip is our Nutri Drip is our guy, our buddy Kurt, and he's the one that, uh, did a episode with me and Kelly talk about the, the, 00:12:09 there's sometimes irrigation might even be harming you because of this, uh, undissolved, the dissolved stuff in your water you can't see, right? 00:12:17 That's right. So we're doing a lot of testing this year on the water quality. Like, and does water change, let's say in the three months 00:12:23 that we water what is our water quality in those three months? Mm-hmm. You know, so, and can we change it? 00:12:29 And how much different is it from area to area, you know? So, and if it was, if we set a standard on 00:12:34 what the bicarbonate should be and, and they, like I said, they've already got a lot of this data out there. 00:12:39 We know what it is and if, can we change it? Can we fix it? Is it, is it, is it where we can fix it? You know? 00:12:46 So we're gonna, we're gonna do some study on that. Well, to, in order to do that, we may have to lay some tape. We may need to do some thing in sections, right? Yep. 00:12:53 So we planted a corn in a circle to where we could lay tape if we desire to or treat certain sections, we could treat one bayit 00:13:01 of the pivot with ES treat one bayit with that. And that way we know what's going on, you know, in the base. So you put down this, you put down this tape to test it. 00:13:09 And are we looking for anything in particular? You, I got, I got that. But like, like when Kelly talks about his water problems, 00:13:17 he says, my water outta my well is got too much calcium and then that it's got so much calcium that it can change the efficacy of an input. 00:13:27 Is that your problem? What's your problem? What, what do you think, what do you think is wrong with your water 00:13:30 Shoot? I don't know. I'm gonna find out though. I hate to start naming. I think this is wrong because most time when I name what's wrong with it, 00:13:37 I'm 180 degrees off. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm talking about. So the stuff that could, the stuff 00:13:41 that could cause you problems and, and make your inputs not as effective would be, obviously it's just a few different minerals that, 00:13:48 that could do this, right? Yeah. Like anything, like we know that every time we water corn 00:13:53 or my, my farm, let's talk about me. Every time I water corn, if you look at a diminishing returns sign, you know, like, 00:14:01 and I, the harder I water, the less corn in perspective that I make. Right now we still make a bunch of corn, 00:14:08 but you'll never make as much corn as you do. If you could get that water in about two or three times and mother nature take over 00:14:13 because we can't mimic a rain. Got It. So that's kind of what we're going after. You know, what, what, how much difference does the rainwater 00:14:20 versus what our water bring outta the ground? And is it affordable or is it achievable to fix it? It may not even be achievable. 00:14:28 All right. So will we have any results by the time we're there on May 22nd? Have any, what? We have any results on the water 00:14:34 testing on the circle field by May 22nd? Nope. We'll just start watering the end of May. Let's, let's hope that we 00:14:39 don't even start water until the end Of that. Yeah, because you don't have to, you're not gonna be using 00:14:42 irrigation until you actually have to. And it's not gonna be that hot by then. That's right. All Right. And then we'll have to ask me, 436 00:14:46.525 --> 00:14:46.565 Shelly, if we can even look at it, right? All right, so we got, we got all the fertility stuff. 00:14:52 We're doing some stuff, uh, with stripped, uh, strip till. We're, we're going to, uh, look at your circle corn. 00:14:58 We're gonna look at skip broke corn. We're going to, uh, also then hear from our friends, uh, nature's agri liquid concept, agritech a DS spray tech, 00:15:05 and then whatever you do. And we get to see, uh, the wonderful Henderson family and the Sanderson family. And you see, you see Chad's dad. 00:15:14 I know Matt Miles is going to be there. You know Matt and Lane's gonna be here. And uh, I don't know who else. 00:15:19 I don't know if Temple's coming. I don't know who else is coming. This thing's, just a couple guys, 00:15:22 which Johnny Braille and his team will be here. You know, they always supported us. She knows. So we're gonna have a good time anyway. 00:15:28 We're gonna have a good time. We're gonna eat good. It's gonna be a morning field day, right? It starts at eight o'clock, I think eight 00:15:33 Starts eight o'clock May 22nd starts at eight o'clock. It concludes with a lunch. And then, uh, you can probably come the night before, right? 00:15:39 That's right. Come on. Come there, Come there and come there and hang out the night before. You don't have to be an Extreme Ag member. Nope. 00:15:43 You have to register. You can register at the Extreme Ag Farm website. Website. You can sign up for all of 'em. 00:15:48 But when you go to Extreme Ag Farm, just click on the little thing at the top it says Field days, and you'll see all of 'em in order sequentially. 00:15:53 And then you can sign up and register for any of 'em. All of 'em. We'd love to see at all of 'em. He's Chad Henderson, someone send the twins, you know, 00:16:00 he'll make an educational, informative and a good time. Be there. May 22nd. Go to as many field days 00:16:05 as you possibly can. They don't, there might Be something dead by then. By then Id probably kill something. Yeah. 00:16:09 By then, maybe, you know, you push the envelope a little bit and uh, and you get 00:16:12 hang out and you get to hang out with 'em. All right? Yeah. So next time. Thanks for being here. That's Chad Harrison. I'm David Mason. 00:16:16 This is Extreme Acts cutting the curve. And for Chad, it's gonna be cutting the corner without cutting the yields. 00:16:21 So next time. That's A wrap for this episode of Extreme ags Cutting the Curve Podcast. Make sure to check out extreme ag.com 00:16:28 for more great content. Cutting. The curve is powered by Nature's Bio. Kay. Check out nature's dot com to learn more about 00:16:35 how Bio Kay can improve your farm's. 00:16:37.805 --> 00:16:38.205