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This is one of the most interesting trials to me because it really is an extreme reduction of nitrogen.
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Way back in early '22 when I met Jared Cook and we looked at the soil samples of my farm, the three sets of samples, 0 to
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6, 6 to 12, 12 to 24-inch deep soil samples. So going down two foot of soil samples and looking at the amount of nitrogen that our soil was mineralizing, Jared Cook made the
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statement, "I don't even know why you use synthetic nitrogen. Your soil's producing more than you're ever going to use." Like, holy cow, what a
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statement that was. And here we are a little over four years later, still working with Jared, still learning from him, things like that, and we've
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reduced our nitrogen a long ways. But I still think that there's more to go. And we did a trial a couple of years ago where we went all the way down to 60
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pounds of anhydrous, all the way up to 240 pounds of anhydrous, and there was a five-bushel yield difference. It was negligible.
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We did try zero pounds at that time, and it was a 70-bushel difference. So we learned that we need something, but when 60 and 240 are the same yield, I
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believe we can go lower than the 60. So this year we're going to stream bar on 15 gallon of 28-0-0-5, so that's 45 pounds of
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nitrogen, and then we're going to go through the season and we're going to take soil tests to see what's available in the soil.
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We're going to take sap tests to see how the plant is doing, and provided that the plant doesn't need anything else, we might not put
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any on. However, because of the extreme reduction in nitrogen, we want to make sure that we have a bit of a safety net,
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and we want to make sure that we don't have a big yield penalty. Align N is our safety net from Tidal Grow.
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We can apply this up to five quarts. The cost of this, depending on the rate, is $12 to $25 an acre, which is not high-priced at all
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relative to what nitrogen is, and we really want to see how low can we go. When I was talking to Galen about doing this trial, he said, "Well, let's face it, when it comes to nitrogen, hindsight
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really is 20/20." Because a lot of years, I really believe that the 40 pounds might be enough. That might be hard for some people to hear in agriculture, but I really
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believe that in our soil, in our environment, 40 pounds might be enough. But we don't know what the weather's going to be like all summer.
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Is it going to be cool and cloudy? Is it going to be warm and sunny? So that really affects the biological system of the soil.
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And so as Galen said, when it comes to nitrogen management, hindsight really is 20/20. We can apply this product as late as
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VT in corn, and so that isn't totally the end of the season, but that is a long way down the season that, as Galen said, gives us a real hindsight to know what we need to do to manage the
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nitrogen in our corn. So again, the path I've been on, the journey I've been on for four years, we're kind of getting to the culmination of
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that, and I'm really excited to see if we can grow corn with only 40 pounds of nitrogen. The APH of this field will be about 220, 225, and
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we're going to see what happens. I expect that some of it we'll probably leave if the sap test says it's okay, and I expect that some of
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it we're going to put the Align N on to see if there's a yield gain. So again, I think this is something to watch throughout the season.
60
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