Farming Video | How Matt Miles Uses Foliar Feeding for Cotton Success
24 Jun 254m 42s

Matt Miles breaks down lessons from XtremeAg’s second annual field day, focusing on cotton fertility practices with Jeff Jones from AgroLiquid. He discusses the benefits of spoon-feeding nutrients and how foliar applications can give cotton an edge over corn and soybeans. The conversation emphasizes practical strategies for mixing fertility with pest and growth regulator sprays for better returns.

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00:00:00 So guys, we just finished up our second annual, our, I guess it'll be our second annual field day for extreme Ag here in DHA County at McGee. 00:00:07 And I've had the unique opportunity to work with Jeff Jones. He is agronomist for agri liquids. 00:00:12 Uh, we've got a couple different things going on. We've got the contest plot going on against Kelly and Kevin. We've got some calcium plots going on. 00:00:19 You made a believer out me last year with the liberate calcium, you know, running alongside the boron against our competitors. 00:00:25 So we've got some, some large acres of that this year. You know, cotton is a plant that's totally different. You're, you're Arkansas guy too, right? 00:00:32 You know, and we, we get to grow cotton. Most of these other guys don't. When you plant it, it comes up looking for a way to die. 00:00:38 Then when it gets big, you're trying to basically kill it or keep it short and then when it's time 00:00:43 to harvest you gotta kill it, you know? So, which you don't ever get it killed, but you get the leaves off of it anyway, so, so one 00:00:49 of the cool things about I say cool things, it's an expensive thing about cotton is we're spraying plant bugs every 10 days. 00:00:55 You know, we'll probably do that anywhere from five to eight times depending on the year. What that allows you to do is to overlay fertility 00:01:03 and spoon, feed fertility on that cotton as you're going over with insects. One thing about y'all's products, they mix with anything. 00:01:09 You know, cotton is always low in calcium here I can never find a tissue sample, never had a tissue sample 00:01:15 where calcium was sufficient. You know, it's a big user of potassium. You know, those two things Right. 00:01:20 There are two things that I really pay a lot of attention to along, you know, with my picks 00:01:24 and gross regulators and everything else. What's your thoughts on that? Yeah, you know, when I approached you guys last year, 00:01:29 I thought I knew, um, talking with you and Lane that we, we had a great opportunity because you know, it was gonna be a trip 00:01:36 where you guys weren't gonna have to do anything extra. We could look at your soil samples and say, Hey, you know, we know we gotta have calcium. 00:01:43 Well we knew our products were gonna mix with about any insecticide you were gonna put out, whether it be for plant bugs or whatever. 00:01:49 So, you know, looking at our products and the um, the technology that we have I think gave us a great opportunity for 00:01:56 that foliar market to not only do it multiple times, but like we did last year. You know, we put low rates even though you know, 00:02:04 you might have needed a higher rate, but with our efficacy of our products of how it translocates through the plant, I think it just gave us an opportunity 00:02:12 to, to put low rate multiples which actually worked for you on your farm. Yeah. And as we've, as the extreme ag has kind of evolved, 00:02:20 you know, we've started doing a lot more Folgers. We've been doing Folgers since I was a kid. Right. You know, but it was mostly boron in 23%. 00:02:26 You know, what we've learned through research on the soybeans and the corn is hey, will this work on cotton? So we started changing some of these big micro packs 00:02:34 and calcium and different things like that. 20 years ago I didn't put any calcium out, you know, not any calcium out foliar for sure. 00:02:40 You know, so this has enabled us to be able to go in there and start doing these things. And what I see, and you tell me if you see the same thing, 00:02:46 'cause you do corn, rice, cotton, and soybean. I see more response outta cotton sometimes than, than corn soybeans. 00:02:52 Absolutely. Cotton. Cotton because the way it's fruiting and it, you know, every week you're fixing 00:02:57 to have another fruiting branch and you're fixing to put, put on more fruit. It's continuing to fruit. 00:03:01 So as you're feeding that crop, I think that the, uh, foliar actually respond to cotton probably better than even corn or soybeans. 00:03:09 Uh, just because even though you're going over it with A PGR and you're kind of stunting its growth to keep it fruiting, 00:03:14 you're also helping advance it with the foliar. That's right. Yeah. The foliar help advance it with the fertility. 00:03:20 The PGR slows it down stacks of nodes where it gets bushier. You know, a lot of people don't know this, 00:03:25 but cotton will get if you let it go, it'll be way over your head Eight foot tall. Yeah. You 00:03:29 know, so, and another thing about that too, you know, in my situation I'm irrigated, but if you're looking at a dry land environment 00:03:35 or even some weather events when you're spoon feeding it and you're going over it all the time 00:03:38 and you're foing you can figure out, okay, I've spent all I can spend, or I've got better weather than I thought I was gonna have, 00:03:44 don't have as much bull rot I can load up on the fertility in the end. Anytime you do that, during that plant's life, it seems that 00:03:50 to show an ROI, in my opinion and, and I Think the mixing ability where we, we can give you a potassium of boron and calcium. 00:03:57 'cause a lot of times calcium doesn't play real good in the sandbox with other nutrients. 00:04:02 I think the mix ability where you can, you can not be worried about putting any PGR out there or any insecticide when you get ready to go. 00:04:10 Ours will mix perfect with whatever you got in your mix. Yep. And that's a big thing like you 00:04:14 said when you're talking about calcium. Yep. So right now on our cotton that, that, that you and I are working with, you know, we are at, 00:04:20 we're at about the 10th, 10th or 11th node. I, I would consider that heavy squaring. And uh, so this is a time we just put out one application. 00:04:28 We'll have another application go out probably the first of next week. Yeah. And then we'll put those other two on as 00:04:33 as time, as time goes. 00:04:35.225 --> 00:04:36.925

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