Farming Video | Managing Potassium for Dryland Cotton

00:00:00 Oh, everything's bigger in Texas. That's what these two guys are going to tell me on my left and right because they're both 00:00:05 from Texas and we're in Texas. We're happy to be here today at Todd's farm. Uh, Mr. Tommy Roads from Nature's Todd Kimber will 00:00:13 talk farms here in Texas. Uh, got some pretty cool stuff going on. Cool thing about Todd is not only does he do corn and wheat, 00:00:20 but he also does cotton. So that gives me a little help on the, on the cotton trials and seeing it in a different location. 00:00:26 Texas a lot different than Arkansas Prime example. We're standing behind a cotton field right now. Why is this not the trial field? 00:00:33 Uh, it's too we to get to it. We can't even get to it. We can't even get within a half a mile of it Right now. We've had two and a half inches of rain, 00:00:41 I guess two days ago and it's just extremely wet, which is almost a new normal here now. 00:00:47 Yeah, Todd's battling the same thing. We're battling in southeast Arkansas and a lot of other places too. 00:00:52 Uh, you know, j v's got it going on up, up in uh, Tennessee. Just a really, really wet spring eighth wettest in the last 00:01:00 133 years in our part of the state. So we've got a lot of battles going on. You can see behind us this, this black ground solid wet. 00:01:07 Uh, but there will be more videos coming on the plot that Todd's doing with, with Tommy. Uh, tell us kind of your objective to the plot. 00:01:15 So Todd and I have been talking and one of the things that he's trying to address, and it normally does not stay like this, uh, 00:01:23 you get into June, July, August, you can get cracks deep enough, wide enough that you can get lost in them. 00:01:30 So when thing, when black dirt dries out, what it's gonna do is tie up K and we all know, you know it, he knows it. 00:01:38 Uh, cotton is a potassium hog, so we're trying to figure out a way to address it Now. Is it through foliar? 00:01:45 Is it through Y Drop And Todd's instance, because he is not irrigated, you kind of have to be flexible. 00:01:51 What we're planning on doing, if it ever dries out, we're gonna use what Matt has been doing, taking potassium acetate K fuel, and he's running his wide drop. 00:02:04 Now, if Todd can ever get in here and do a wide drop, we've got him running, uh, KFL, which comes along with sulfur, potassium, uh, 00:02:14 cotton loaf sulfur. And then depending on again, how the season goes, he can add, he can keep adding in potassium acetate into his 00:02:23 foliar program and kind of adjust, uh, kinda what the season is providing. And that's pretty cool thing 00:02:28 because you know, like we were talking about earlier, you know, I'd be a nervous wreck being a dry land farmer, but with the different ways you can put out your products, 00:02:37 you start with a wide drop, you know, you're gonna need some potassium regardless. And then as your crop progresses, depending on the weather, 00:02:43 and you probably do this on your, on everything else too, then you can add those extra shots 00:02:48 when you know they're gonna pay. That's right. Uh, y drop is always tough in this cotton, in this dry land. 00:02:53 I guess it's the only thing I know I've never had irrigation, but the timing of y drop we were talking about 00:02:58 earlier, it just makes us nervous. Like when it dries up when we get in here, is it gonna quit raining? 00:03:03 You know, it's just a, a battle, but we'll get in here as soon as we can and get it out. But it is nice knowing that we can switch 00:03:10 to a foliar though, uh, in that instance and get some K that way if you Get nervous and you decide not to go with a wide drops, 00:03:17 then you get a good rain and you know you're gonna make some more crop then you come back in with That's right. 00:03:21 Some, some potassium aate. And the the nice thing about potassium acetate is that I haven't personally found 00:03:29 or heard of anything, any chemistry, any fertilizer that it will not mix with. So Mr. Tommy, there's several different types of pot ash, 00:03:37 foer, pot ash soil supply you can put out. Right. Explain the difference of acetate and why, what the reason for using 00:03:44 that over some of these other choices. These Other, well, and you just mentioned it. People refer to the general term pot ash, that kind of Yeah. 00:03:52 Say that you did. Uh, they think of potash as being dry. KCL. Yeah. So that's one thing. 00:03:58 Us being in liquid, we, we taught you can solubilize dry pot ash, you can use KTS, you can use potassium nitrate. 00:04:06 None of them are as available to be taken up by the plant. You, we hate dealing with salt. 00:04:13 I mean, 'cause that's what exactly KCL is, uh, acetate gets into the plant faster soil applied. It kind of has dual action. 00:04:22 Not only are you getting benefits of the K, but you're getting that carbon acetate to help cycle recycle nutrients. 00:04:30 So there's a big difference. Plus, uh, we have another side of the business that uses it as runway de-icer on all these big, uh, 00:04:40 airports in North America. So low freezing temperature, which we don't have to worry about freezing temperatures here typically, 00:04:47 unless yeah, Texas deep freeze three or four years ago, right? But so anyway, it's very flexible application wise. 00:04:55 Timing wise, industry wise, very Flexible. Also a good, uh, stress mitigator, right? 00:05:00 It is very potassium moves everything else around in a plant. Keeps plant healthy, healthy plant out here right now. 00:05:07 But you get into a hundred, 110 degrees, which it's coming. It's not like that right now, but it's, it's coming. Yep. 00:05:15 To me that's important. When it gets hot and dry, what's the first thing to usually go deficient? Potassium. Potassium. 00:05:21 So the more you have in the right spot of a good product, the better off you'll be through that. 00:05:26 Spell that. Eat, spell. Well, and, and a big thing to me on potassium in general is timing. You know, we don't eat breakfast and, 00:05:35 and spend the rest of the day with an oatmeal and go back, eat breakfast the next day when we can split those applications up maybe a little bit free, 00:05:41 maybe a little bit wide drop and come in with foer and we're having breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We're not just having breakfast front loading it. It's easy. 00:05:49 Kelly always used the word easy button. If you can push the easy button, put all your potash out in the fall. 00:05:55 Even people do that, right? But if you really want to, to get the best efficiency out of the potassium, splitting it up, 00:06:03 spoon feed it is NC normally works best for us, right? So guys, we've had a great time here. We've looked at a lot of things. 00:06:09 Uh, I'm still not sure if everything's bigger in Texas. I'm still working on that. Um, but we've had a great time, beautiful land, beautiful family 00:06:16 to hang out with and, um, hopefully the products do what they're supposed to do. I've got quite a bit of confidence in them. We'll be 00:06:23 Back, uh, later in season as we, I mean, the pot is right down there. Can't get to it, but we'll be back in more 00:06:29 videos, uh, as season Progresses. We had two options. We had a helicopter and we had a dozer. That's the only two ways we could get to the plot, correct? 00:06:36 And I thought I was wet till I got here. So, uh, we're gonna pray for you and, and hope you get the right weather. 00:06:42 I know you're gonna need this rain in another 10 or 12 days. You're gonna be be begging for it like, 00:06:46 like we do. But there was a third Option. What's the third option? Kayak. Kayak. 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