Tackling Yield Challenges: How Soil Balance Impacts Soybean Production
14 Aug 246m 55s

Kelly Garrett dives into one of the biggest challenges in farming—yield-limiting factors, specifically focusing on base saturation in soybean fields. Garrett explains how uneven soybean growth can be traced back to imbalances in soil nutrients, particularly calcium and magnesium.

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00:00 What's your biggest yield limiting factor? Have you thought about it? That's what we're talking about today with Kelly Garrett 00:05 in the soybean field. It's uh, midseason. They look fine to me. Oh, there's a little unevenness. 00:11 But that could be because of the topography. I don't see any problem with these soybeans and you're telling me No. 00:15 There's one thing that I start concerning myself with when it comes to soybeans. What? Well, really with any crop, it's base saturation. 00:22 And in these hills it's base saturation. Calcium. We're learning more and more that the magnesium is a problem, you know, with the, uh, 00:29 more detailed soil tests and things like that. Evans is taking, but it is base saturation calcium. And you could see right now, 00:36 this is the reason we chose this spot. It's green on all of those knobs. Mm-Hmm. All of those hogbacks. 00:41 But if you come back in a month, they're gonna get yellow. Where's the first spot? They get yellow. 00:46 It's those lower yielding areas on the knobs. Those are typically higher pH areas. And that higher pH though really isn't the problem. 00:52 The higher pH is there because the base saturation calcium, perfectly balanced soil is 65% calcium, 01:00 13% magnesium, 4% potassium up there we're, it'll get yellow in those thin spots. I would venture to guess, it wouldn't surprise 01:07 me if it was not over. If we didn't address it. Could be 90% calcium. That's the number one problem we have. Alright. 01:14 I'm not an agronomist. You just went over my head. You said that's 90% base saturation. Base saturation. And what's that mean? 01:21 Because we talked about it on a podcast, but to the person that didn't see that before, what's that mean in terms of the plant 01:27 and why do I care as a farmer? It, well now we're gonna get into electricity. Uhhuh. We're in electrical charge. 01:32 Uhhuh, calcium and magnesium are big, strong, powerful, double charged, double positive charged ions. 01:41 And your phosphorus exam, for example, is a triple negative. Okay. And everything wants to get to be neutral. 01:47 So when you have an overabundance of calcium, you know, at 65%, not a huge problem. Not a problem at all. But at 90% Right. 01:54 It's a problem because that extra 25% of calcium wants to get neutral and it's gonna look for something to tie up. And it's gonna tie up 02:02 Other nutrients. Other nutrients, okay. It's gonna tie up your phosphorus and push your potassium outta the way. 02:06 All right. So an example then is obviously we've gotta a plant that's outta balance because 02:10 it's the plant that's not the soil. The Soil's outta balance The soil's out balance, which, And 'cause the soil's outta balance, 02:14 the nutrients unavailable. Okay. So the plant, the soil's outta balance, it's, it makes the nutrient unavailable. 02:19 'cause it's tying up other nutrients that plant can get it. And the thing is, the person 02:22 that takes a soil sample might say, what the hell's happening? That stuff is in my soil. But it's not balanced, 02:27 It's not, it's not available. Mm-Hmm. Because the soil's out of balance. You'll have, you'll have people that don't understand this, 02:33 that I've talked to, that they will have, uh, very high base saturation calcium. Yep. And then they'll look 02:39 and they'll be like, well I've got 300 parts per million KI don't need to apply K. 02:43 Right. But I've seen the K as low before is 1.2%, not four. You know why all that K is there 02:49 because it's unavailable. Yeah, It's there. It's there because it's just simply not being used. 02:53 Yes. You might have a P two, which is a major of phosphorus, a P two that is 60, 70, even 80. But the P one will be quite low because it's tied up 03:03 because of the electrical charge. We've got to address the calcium problem in the hills in a river bottom, in a gumbo type situation. 03:10 It's, it's magnesium. Alright. You got accused in one of our previous videos by one of our guys on our webinar being too obsessed with calcium. 03:17 Of course. Then Chad's too obsessed with boron. We can go on and on and on. But now you're gonna talk me about phosphorus. 03:22 You said one thing I wanna make sure we get in this video is about the phosphorus thing. So talk about that. 03:26 Well, phosphorus, you know, you've got NP and K, we've got our macros. I've also been sitting on our webinar many times. 03:31 We pay too much attention to 'em. We don't pay too much attention to 'em, but we, we do pay too much attention 03:37 to 'em relative to the micros. We need to pay attention to everything. Okay. And now phosphorus needs to be available. 03:43 It's one of the most important nutrients we have as a macro, things like that. And because of that negative charge, 03:48 the calcium tying it up. Yep. We need to find a way to release it. Okay. Is there anything that the person's watching? 03:54 It's like, okay, I don't know if I have a saturation problem or not. And also I don't have the hills that Kelly has, 03:58 so they might be making the excuse. Does everybody have this problem? The soil's out of balance all over Chad Mack, 04:04 Kevin Temple, they all have a magnesium problem. Uh, we're in the hills, the lust hills here of Western Iowa. You get on the river bottom here, 30 miles west 04:11 of us in the Missouri River bottom where the gumbo is. Mund Damon, Iowa, Sloane Iowa, up in Little Sioux, they have a magnesium problem. 04:19 You talked about different products you use to help correct the balance, uh, in your soil. What are you doing? 04:23 Well, we use the plant food byproduct we use is sulfur. Sulfur is a double negative, which you know, now I know phosphorus is a triple, sulfur is a double, 04:30 but sulfur is a big, strong, powerful ion. Just like the positive of the magging cow becomes the most attractive thing. 04:38 So if you can put ammonium sulfate on your soils, again, I use that plant food byproduct, 04:43 but that's a unique situation. Yep. Ammonium sulfate on your soils will help amend that. Then we do other things. We run products and furrow. 04:49 One of the newest products, and it's a trial in this field, is Raytheon from concept Agritech. 04:55 Got it. Raytheon Inferral helps break apart that problem. It helps amend that problem. Is 05:00 It, is, is this product Raytheon? Is it a macro, is it a micronutrient package? 'cause we've got a lot of those ORs 05:05 or something else in there that's making work. No, no. It is not a micronutrient package. It's a synthetic material that they have in a product. 05:12 Uh, you know, Trey and Burt have, have developed it. It goes in furrow. Uh, you know, I like to see stuff I've learned. It 05:17 Goes in time of planting Goes in furrow No More. Nope. And and the idea 05:21 is it's gonna get you through the season. That's right And balanced. Well, last year we put it in a soybean field. 05:25 Last year was very dry. So the soybean yield up there was about 55 12 bushel yield gain in 55 bushel beans. 05:32 That's a 20% over a 20% return on to the yield. It was a huge success. So because of that, we're using it again here. 05:40 If it has as bigger return this year as it did last year Yep. It'll probably become a grower standard practice. You're 05:46 You're doing less soybeans. We are in one of your soybean fields that didn't get, uh, cut out of, uh, of being in soybeans. 05:52 Tell me what you expect to see with the concept agritech thing. I hope to see another 10 or 15 bushel, 05:56 but I wouldn't just use Raytheon in soybeans. I'd use Raytheon in wheat, corn, soybeans, every crop For the soil to balance for 06:03 The soil because it amends the soil. His Name's Kelly Garrett. I'm Dave Mason coming at you from the soybean field. 06:07 We're talking about balancing the soil, amending the soil to make it balanced. Ab Absolutely. So our number one 06:12 priority, Two negatives. Don't make a positive. They do in math, but they don't know when it comes to your soil. They 06:17 Don't when it comes to the Soil. Got it. So next time, thanks for being here. Check out all the other great stuff@extrememag.farm. 06:22 Hundreds of videos just like this. You can share 'em with your friends. If you wanna take your learning to the next level 06:26 and have direct access to guys like Kelly, Matt, Kevin, Chad Temple. You know what you can do. You can spend $750 a year. 06:31 That's very, very, very small amount per year. And you'll have direct access to the guys. If you have a question, you'll go a little more in depth 06:36 about some of these product trials. You'll also get the data from the trials. And you also get di uh, 06:41 special offers from some of our business partners. Like the last two years, XT Extreme Mag members have gone to, uh, to Commodity Classic for free. 06:48 So next time, thanks for being here. I'm David Mason.

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