Farming Podcast | Double Crop Soybean Fertility Strategies | XtremeAg

00:00:00 Welcome to Extreme ags Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights and real results to help you improve your farming operation. 00:00:10 And now here's your host, Damien Mason, Economic fertility Challenge with extreme ag and our friends at Agro liquid, 00:00:18 we're talking about this time, double crop beans. That's right. My friend from the south commonly call them wheat beans, meaning 00:00:25 after they harvest the wheat, they stick in the soybeans. Well they did that this year at Chad Henderson's farm 00:00:31 and each of them put together a different prescription for the fertility. A budget of, let me get this right, $40 of foliar applied 00:00:41 nutrition, and they could decide how to apportion that and make it work for them. Each of extreme ag guys teamed up 00:00:48 with someone from agro liquid. So as such, we've got Gabe Saxon, he's our guy that always has a Mississippi State Bulldogs for 00:00:54 and owe Mississippi State Bulldogs. I might add 4.0 Bull Bulldogs. Uh, as of the risk recording, uh, 00:01:01 with their flag in the background, Stephanie Linco, uh, the agronomist that is always doing these plots for us with Agri liquid. 00:01:08 And then I got Matt Miles, Chad Henderson and Temple Roads. This was done at your property. What'd you do, Chad? 00:01:16 So, you know, we talked about this and, and what we wanna do a little different, you know, and what popular program could we use, you know, 00:01:21 since it wasn't an in furrow deal or two to two deal. So we come up with this on double crop beans, you know, as we've been chasing these, you know, the phantom, 00:01:29 let's say the phantom 80 bushel number of double crop beans, even sometimes a phantom 70 bushel number 00:01:35 of double crop beans, you know. But we know, you know, a lot of times we say, well, the only thing that we can really affect them is plant date. 00:01:41 You know, the earlier you can get it planted, the more you're gonna make. Uh, so we went at this a little different 00:01:47 and it wasn't a early program, you know, we thinking, well, the most time to influence something is 00:01:51 between R one and R three. So we said, Hey, let's just jump on with a R three fungicide deal. 00:01:56 That way when we, you know, have this program and farmers look at it, they can say like, you know what? That's manageable. We can do that. 00:02:03 We're making that pass already. This is not an extra pass through the field. So we got these things loaded up and me and Gabe sit down 00:02:11 and decided to go on and ram it to him just a little bit. So we put our program together 00:02:17 and then, uh, it went from there. So, by the way, uh, Stephanie, you're a winner. We've talked about this in other recordings. 00:02:27 You teamed up with who on this one? You team up with Chad again? Nope. I teamed up with Matt this time. Okay. 00:02:33 How bad Did we lose? Uh, so Stephanie, I don't wanna say you're pulling an anchor, but I mean, all right. 00:02:44 What'd you do? What'd you do with Matt? So with Matt, we looked at the soil test, um, like we always do make a program 00:02:51 and the one thing that stuck out probably more than anything else was chad's low magnesium levels on the farm. 00:02:57 And magnesium is one of those nutrients that's very hard to manage because from the fertility point, 00:03:02 it doesn't play well with others. So you can't mix that and have a long-term storage, um, even with the agro liquid products. 00:03:09 And so come up with a way other than a lime source to manage magnesium is really hard. Um, so what we did is we just came up with a program 00:03:16 that focused, um, nitrogen, calcium, and then we were able to add magnesium in. So it was an extra step for Chad 00:03:24 because we couldn't mix it all in one tote and send it in the springtime. You Focused on, you focused on nitrogen on 00:03:30 soybeans, is that's what I just heard. Yep. We put a little bit of nitrogen in some calcium and then magnesium are people, right? 00:03:37 Are people right now that are not as agronomically, uh, astute as you saying, shaking their head and saying, no, you don't need to put nitrogen out there 00:03:43 for soybeans even though it's coming in after, uh, a wheat crop. Yeah, they could, you know, 00:03:48 there's a lot of different theories. Do you need nitrogen or not? We're pushing for 80 bushel beans. 00:03:52 So any help we could give them, I thought some extra nitrogen, um, was a, a push in that right direction. You 00:03:57 Know, it really makes me proud that Stephanie and Matt would start there because you know, that means 00:04:02 that they actually thought we had potential to get there. You know, most of the time if you're, you know, 00:04:06 anything under that, what do we say, anything under that 70 bushel, 60, 70 bushel late season needs a little, needs a little push of it. 00:04:12 So thank y'all. Because most of the time people like, huh, ain't no need next. He can't get there in any anyway. 00:04:19 Timba, what you lot of wind, Tim Timbo, what'd you do? What'd you do for your soybean, uh, thing on uh, at Chad's place? 00:04:26 Well, I mean, down in Chad's area down in the south and Matt's area as well, it's, it's really hard to push a double crop soybean 00:04:34 because they're racing so hard. You know, where where do you try to go in on and make a difference? 00:04:39 You know, that was like, that was kind of what I was, and you know, and I hate to say this 'cause I always kind of follow the same thing 00:04:45 and I always like kind of stick with phosphorus, but the reason that I definitely want phosphorus into this is because I want to give that plant some more energy. 00:04:54 You know, phosphorus really pushes energy. There's a lot of phosphorus use, um, in the plant's lifecycle in, you know, 00:05:02 the reproductive stages. So I thought if we fell short on anything, maybe it'd be, it would be phosphorus 00:05:08 and maybe we could jumpstart that plant and get a little bit more energy. Maybe it would help pull in some of the other, 00:05:13 um, nutrients. So that's kind of what what I stuck with. But, but again, like in Chad tell you 00:05:19 and Matt tell you both when you talk about double crop soybeans, like up here, we can make a difference because our season is so much longer to grow. 00:05:27 Like, 'cause we don't get heat, you know, it's not that we have a longer growing season, we just, our growing season is different that when it gets hot like 00:05:36 that, like the crop races so hard to get to the end and you, you can't stop that process. So it, it is definitely a challenge. 00:05:44 Like what we can do with micronutrients up here is very different than what you do in the south. So it was a challenge for me to try to think about 00:05:54 what exactly can I do to try to put more st things into that plant and drag more things in. So I kind of stuck with 00:06:02 phosphorus is what I kind of thought. I wanna throw that out there. Since Stephanie's a Michigan person. 00:06:06 Real quickly to tee off of what temple just said, there's no double crop soybeans in northern Indiana where I am. 00:06:11 Generally it's, it is because we, the wheat comes off later, beginning of July and so you run outta moisture 00:06:17 and you run out of heat units, I think are the reasons we don't do double crop soybeans. Where, where I am or where you are. 00:06:23 Stephanie, different story in Alabama where Chad is, it's just, it's the battle against heat that's, I mean it's not, it's, it's not an issue 00:06:31 of even fertility up here. I don't think it's an issue of we run outta season, we run outta moisture if, if they can take care of the heat 00:06:38 and obviously if it's irrigated then the nutri the nutrients nutrition is the issue. 00:06:44 Yeah, certainly we definitely run out of time is our biggest factor in the north. Um, but you know, for everybody else in the south, you know, 00:06:52 it is, it's that managing of those environmental conditions and making sure we have the fertility there if the, 00:06:58 you know, environment works out that we have a rainfall, the moisture or irrigation to get us there. 00:07:05 Gabe, you um, you haven't said anything yet, you're kinda like your Mississippi State bulldogs come in underrated. 00:07:11 Nobody expects anything out of them. You know, they're an also ran, you're going to, you're gonna bang this up, aren't you? 00:07:19 Well, I mean, Chad and I had a little few discussions. We did not put the magnesium in there. We uh, we actually did go 00:07:25 after a little bit of, we actually did go after a little bit of nitrogen later on. We focused on potassium 00:07:31 and some of the micronutrients just looking at what the plant needs at that, that time in its lifecycle. So potassium's gonna help regulate a lot of things 00:07:39 and stress is one of them in the plant. So we know that we're potassium hogs down here in the south, just about everything. 00:07:45 And then as we started look at the calcium and the boron and the other things we were just talking about how do we, 00:07:50 how do we keep the stress down? How do we keep the pods on? How do we fill 'em and do that? So that was kind of the way that we, we looked at it 00:07:57 and that's why we threw the micronutrient package at it. Um, we did split some stuff off and add a little bit more. 00:08:04 And then the fun part was we threw so Somali at the end and I don't know that that helped us or not. Chad doesn't have a happy face on his 00:08:11 and, and assumed we lost. So I don't know. Now, you know, the, it looks real good, you know, Gabe, we hadn't, they're turned changing color 00:08:18 so we hadn't gathered them, you know, when, and we're in the middle of the game here still, so, but uh, but, but we got it done 00:08:24 and you know, the magnesium wasn't the problem. You know, it come in here and like I said, I wanna applaud y'all because Stephanie sends this stuff. 00:08:30 Gabe sends it in here and it comes in in these totes like temple was talking about and it's just mixed up, you know, 00:08:36 and it has her names on it. We make sure we get the program right. And, and it had on the box of the mag for, for, uh, Matt 00:08:44 and said, do not add till you see, you know, it was like, it was one of the don't play with me. 00:08:49 And I'm like, ooh, ooh. So, but, but I wanna talk just a second about how we laid, laid this out. 00:08:55 This, this actual trial is laid out on top of the field day. That was last year. And we had part of it 00:09:00 that we make one pass in, in a certain part of the field where we have that to run soil sample zone 00:09:06 or run tissue sample zone or SAP or whatever we need. And then the other part of the field is a 10 acre trial. So for you that's listening, you know, 00:09:12 this is not a a one pass deal, you know, we got it's 40 acres in this thing and it's 10, 10 and 10 and then a check obviously. 00:09:20 But it's, it's, it's always a good experiment with this stuff and it's always, you know, run pretty well and it's, it's eyeopening to see, 00:09:29 Uh, so, uh, your expectation, 80 bushel beans as you said, uh, on double crop, what's normal, You know, a lot of times we we're gonna land in that range 00:09:41 of uh, anywhere from 62 to 68, 66, 60 fours. And if we can get these things planted the first week of June, we can touch at 70. 00:09:52 Well these beans actually planted us I think on the fourth, the fourth or 5th of June is a plant date on these. 00:09:58 And we got a rain and got 'em going. You know, it ain't always a fact of oh, I planted them first week of June. 00:10:02 No, it's, it, the clock starts when they come outta the ground. Mm-hmm. So that's, that's kind of when the day starts. 00:10:08 So if they're not, if we're not planting them into moisture, then we're gonna water 'em. 00:10:11 As soon as we plant 'em, we're gonna water 'em up because that's when the clock starts. And you know, the soybean is kinda like a cuck bird, 00:10:17 you know, or a cuck bird is like a soybean, either one. But when it comes outta the ground, all it knows is what the daylight is, you know, where it's at, what it is 00:10:24 and it knows how fast you ramp. Far as p on pods or whatever units Doesn't matter until, so you said on all those treatments 00:10:33 you said went on between R one and R three is what you said. They actually went on at R three 00:10:38 with a fungicide application. Okay. That's correct. Alright. And Tim didn't get the fungicide, but I did. 00:10:44 Matt got a half h you know, but anyway, we're, we're, we're good to go. Alright. What do you expect out of this, Stephanie, 00:10:51 since you're the, you're the one that conducts all these, what do you expect to see? Well, I'm gonna think that 00:10:57 the combine's gonna tell this story, but I'm gonna guess they're all gonna be very similar. I'm not sure if we can influence a whole lot with, uh, 00:11:03 fertility program late in the season. You know, that's the goal to see if we can, everyone took a different approach. 00:11:09 Um, but in reality, I'm gonna guess they're all gonna yield within a bushel of two of each other. 00:11:15 So the, of all the trials we're doing cotton and soy and, and stuff, preseason, all that, what's really, 00:11:21 you think this one's the one that is frankly got the least room to benefit? I do. Just 'cause I don't think we know how 00:11:29 to treat these double croppings yet. Um, and we're still trying to figure out what that missing piece Mother nature plays a bigger 00:11:35 role than fertility. Um, but what we have to do is figure out where to put fertility in if Mother Nature is 00:11:42 giving us the best scenario. Um, and so I think that's what we're gonna find out is are there certain nutrients that respond differently? 00:11:49 Gabe Regional knowledge, does it favor you? This is your, this is, is this close to home court for you? I hope it does. Um, I just kind 00:11:58 of, I'm, I'm with Stephanie. I think we've got to figure out, uh, mother Nature's gonna throw the biggest curve ball, 00:12:03 so we've gotta figure out what the plan's doing at that point in time and just see if we can help move it along. 00:12:08 So then I gotta ask the question, if this comes out and there's no difference, do we do it next year at a $20 budget? 00:12:15 Because we decided that no offense, I know you're in the business of selling fertilizer, maybe on double crop beans, 00:12:21 fertility isn't as important as we thought. Yeah, I think for next year, or anyone that wants to look into this, you need 00:12:27 to pick one nutrient here. We kind of took a, a season or a full package approach. I think we need to figure out 00:12:34 and go back a step of is it phosphorus that we need? Is it the nitrogen that we need? Um, and look at individual nutrients. 00:12:40 So not so much a budget, but a nutrient to see which one's gonna help push us through. 00:12:45 Matt, I think I, I don't, I don't wanna cut in here, sorry, Matt, but like, I, I don't, I disagree, like, because it all depends on where you are 00:12:55 because in our area there's a massive amount of, um, difference that you can make with a late season treatment in double crop soybeans. 00:13:04 I, and I just truly believe that it is all weather related and maybe it is a south thing, 00:13:10 but what happens if we find that piece, you know, that one piece that we need in the south by taking all these different avenues. 00:13:18 You know, look at what Stephanie and Matt did, they put in late season margin. Well a soybean, you know, can only nodulate enough 00:13:26 for about 70 to 80 bushels an acre anyway. What happens if that late season nitrogen was a missing link? 00:13:33 You know, I never thought about that until they just got talking about it. What happens if that's the missing link 00:13:37 and that pushes you to, you know, 80 bushel on, on double crop irrigated beans and you didn't realize that the way that that crop raced, 00:13:46 it didn't have enough time to make enough nodulation where it could make its own nitrogen, you know, and now you gave it just a little touch of something 00:13:54 and it could finish the crop off. Like there's pieces and parts that I think that we're gonna find in this. I think that we're gonna find something. 00:14:05 Well, I, I'm, I'm, I go to Matt, I gotta go to Matt. Poor Matt's been sitting there 00:14:09 and I want to hear what he has to say about this. But go ahead Jen. No, I wanna hear Matt, go ahead. 00:14:16 Well, I mean, Matt was sitting there 20 minutes and I haven't got caught on yet, so I've got like 45 things to say. 00:14:21 So I'm gonna be like Temple. We first started extreme ag was during the, you know, was our early years was during the, that the, uh, you know, 00:14:32 when I was still growing wheat and wheat beans, it might've been the same year as a wheat wager. 00:14:36 I think it was when I did like eight different trials in a wheat field trying to find something. And, and I think temple's right on the heat. 00:14:48 Um, I've tried everything in the world and Chad has two to influence double crop beans. Hadn't been able to do it. Now, 00:14:54 have we made 80 bushel on double crop beans? Yes, Chad, you can go into your operation center and you can zone out your darkest green on your yield mount 00:15:02 and you're gonna get you, you're gonna get 80 to 85 bushel maybe on three or four acres in a hundred acre field when you hit 00:15:08 those top greens. So there's something, there is something there, but every time we went back 00:15:13 and looked at that, it's a little higher fertility or a little better soil to be able to do that on, replicate that on a total fee. 00:15:21 Even one field, you know, I've never been able to do that, Chad, at the nail on the head, we're going to be between 16 00:15:26 and 70 bushel on our wheat beans no matter if we put 55 products on there or, or three now we're go, 00:15:34 we've got a grower standard practice on wheat beans we're gonna do. Either way there's certain fertility, potassium, 00:15:39 different things that, that are, are that the wheat beans gonna respond to. You can make 50 bushel wheat beans if you don't do anything, 00:15:46 and you can make 60 to 70 bushel wheated beans if you treat 'em within reason of how you treat your full season beans. 00:15:53 So there's advantages in yield, you know, yield increases by just doing normal agronomy. 00:15:59 Right? What we're trying to do here is propel that to a different level, to that 80 bushel level. You know, I'm excited about the mag and the calcium. 00:16:08 You know, that's something that, that I haven't done a lot of and we know what calcium does to a plant, you know, 00:16:14 so if we can get those nutrients flowing a little better, I'm hoping the calcium and the mag may make a difference. 00:16:19 I'm like, Stephanie, if if there's more than three bushel difference in this, you know, we've been looking for 00:16:26 that magic bushel, magic bullet. I'll be very surprised if we get, you know, one of us come outta here with 10 or 12 bushel 00:16:35 or even eight bushel more than the other one. Hopefully it's me and Stephanie, but I just, I, I've done this for a long time trying 00:16:42 to influence wheat beans. The heat, when we're planting the soil temperature, when we're planting these beans are gonna be anywhere from 00:16:48 85 to 90 degrees, you know, so if don't get outta there quick, he'll spoil before he even gets out of the ground. 00:16:55 So he is already sick when he comes up because it's, you know, everybody wants a warm soil temperature, 00:17:00 but they don't want a hot soil temperature. If you walked outta my sandy fields' barefooted while you were planting wheat beans, you would blister your feet, 00:17:08 your skin would blister. That's how hot that sand is. You've been to the beach, you know what I'm talking about. So influencing that heat, you know, maybe, 00:17:17 maybe we do something here, but I'm very pessimistic that one of us is gonna be out there, you know, 00:17:23 six lengths ahead at the end of the race. You said you had 40 things, you were gonna be like temple. Is that all? 00:17:30 I I I feel responsible because I didn't get to soon enough and, and now you're making me feel bad. 00:17:38 You know what? I'm wearing the hat. Yours makes me feel guilty, Stephanie, sorry. Alright. All right, Chad, you're getting ready 00:17:46 to hop in here on this. So the point is, it's done at your place and, and we got a lot of, we got a lot of expectation, uh, 00:17:53 that the reality is we don't think we're gonna vary too much from one end of the spectrum to the other on this. 00:17:58 What would've, what would change it? What if you didn't have your $40 budget? Uh, no, I, I really like the fact that the, for me, 00:18:04 the pull out of this may not always be fertility, but it's all the, the miners that we're talking about, you know, we're talking about 00:18:09 mag, we're talking about calcium. Those are things like, it's, it's easy for us to go out here and say, oh, I'm gonna put some more phosphorus on, 00:18:16 or man, I'm gonna go out here and put some potassium acetate on, you know, and, and we're gonna get it done. 00:18:21 Well, we just, it's, it's harder for us to dig into these others that may be the missing link, you know? 00:18:28 Uh, so, so that's what I'm more excited about is that, and, and the beans do look really good. 00:18:32 Uh, they've had a good year. We, we hadn't had that stupid heat all year long. Well, some of our corn yields in the 00:18:39 south y y'all could see that. Um, so we, I think we got a good shot of raising, I, I think they're gonna land in the 72 to 76 range. 00:18:50 You know, I think they're gonna be really good beans. We've kept the water to 'em. So, like I said, the leaves are dropping now and, 00:18:55 and we're going to tell the tail Now. Then the thing is, we, we didn't start out with a, uh, uh, 00:19:02 deficient soil, you know, so when you're starting out with a soil like Chad's got, that's already got pretty good base fertility to it, 00:19:09 you know, I say this all the time on full season being, you can get a guy from 50 to 70, way easier than you can get a guy from 80 to a hundred. 00:19:17 Mm-hmm. I mean, there's a whole lot of things you can manipulate with fertility from 60 to 80, then from 80 to a hundred. 00:19:24 Well, we're starting out with soils that are pretty damn good soils. That even makes it more of a challenge. Yeah. 00:19:30 You know, I just don't think God wants a, a wheat bean to be 80 bushel beans. So if you, with the kind of base fertility we got here, 00:19:39 it's a little bit challenging. Yeah, Yeah. It's hard to move the, it's harder to move the needle when, 00:19:44 when you're already pretty close to the end. It's the last, it is the last 10th of a second or something that, uh, CHADS trying to get. 00:19:51 Yep. We, we made 82 bushel one time and Mo then before that my record was like 76, you know, and, and it's just like Matt says, this is a two, two 00:20:00 and a half acre grid, or she know what I'm saying? But, but man, it's just hard. Anytime you get over that 70 range 00:20:06 because about 60 to 62, it'll hit you right in the nose with normal fertility, you know, irrigated Gabe last word, Gabe last word. 00:20:17 This is, this is, this is your thing, man. I Think you just need to set the expectations, pay attention to what's going on around you, um, 00:20:26 and understand the fertility that's in the soil, and then pay attention to that so you can kind of feed through the plant. 00:20:34 All right. Temple, I, I appreciate you being on here. You're in the field right now, and I know that this thing has to bother you. 00:20:40 I didn't really give Gabe Les where I'm giving it to you. The thing is being put on a budget on all these economic 00:20:46 fertility challenges, they're putting you on a budget. Does it bother you a little bit? Does it bother you a bit like 00:20:50 you're hand, you're handcuffed? Yeah, because there was a lot of things that I kind of wanted to put in there and just couldn't get 00:20:58 inside that budget range. But, but I still think, I mean, if a $40 budget as a full, as a foliar treatment, that's, it's pretty stout. 00:21:09 You know? So if we can't make a difference, um, with this, we, I mean, in my opinion, I, I don't know 00:21:15 that we make a difference, um, in the south, but I mean, I, with that program that I, that's what I use and it makes a tremendous difference. 00:21:26 Now the difference is you go back and you talk about soil fertility and Matt talked about getting guys from 50 00:21:32 to 70 bushel versus, you know, 75, 80 to a hundred. Um, the big difference is, is there's a couple things. One, I've already told you that in the South 00:21:42 they get the heat and if they get the moisture their plants race and they, 00:21:47 and they, they, they're, they're trying to get to the end. Well, the same thing happens in a soybean, um, 00:21:54 not necessarily in corn, but if you have high fertility in the soil, soybeans race through vegetation 00:22:00 and if they race through vegetation, they don't, you don't produce as good of a soybean crop at the end because their requirements to, 00:22:10 to produce pods is in the end. So if you have high fertility, your plant's gonna raise and you're gonna get a vegetative long leggy plant, 00:22:19 and then you get the heat and the moisture that you're gonna get in the south sometimes, especially with irrigation, 00:22:25 then you got the same thing again. So you double both of them up and you're gonna go out there and you're gonna look at them soybeans, 00:22:31 and Chad's gonna look at and be like, man, they're beautiful. You know, they're waist, chest high, they're awesome. 00:22:36 But you can actually do more and you can make more of a difference with follow your treatments when your sore fertility is 00:22:44 lower when you're in a situation like they're at in the, in the south. Yeah. And duty at the end. Yep. 00:22:52 All right. That's Temple Roads. Chad Henderson, Matt, miles of the Extreme at guys joined by Gab Sack, Gabe Saxon 00:22:57 and Stephanie Linco with Ag Agro Liquid. We're doing economic fertility challenges. This one was on soybeans. 00:23:03 Uh, the goal was 80 bushels on double crop beans, meaning after wheat, uh, a big challenge. 00:23:09 And you can stay tuned to find out what, what ends up being the results when the combines roll. We're gonna give you all that results. 00:23:15 Also, check out all the videos these guys shoot in the field, as well as past episodes of cutting the curve. There's hundreds of all of those videos out there. 00:23:21 It's a free library of information, extreme Ag Farm. Till next time, thanks for being here. If I wanna learn more about this, where do I go? 00:23:28 Gabe and Stephanie? I go to@girlliquid.com. Got it. Till next time. Thanks for being here. I'm Damien Mason with extreme Ag Cutting the Curve. 00:23:36 That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 600 00:23:44.685 --> 00:23:45.965