Fertilizer Hack | Maximizing In-Furrow Fertilizer Strategies for Corn and Cotton
Delta farmers are gearing up for planting, focusing on in-furrow (IF) applications to enhance crop performance. While traditionally used for phosphorus pop-up fertilizers, IF now includes stabilizers, humic acids, micronutrients, PGRs, and sugars, creating a synergistic effect that improves nutrient uptake and ROI.
Research shows IF benefits corn and cotton, though results vary for soybeans. Precision placement via IF and 2x2 banding reduces fertilizer waste while maximizing efficiency. Farmers using three-point hitch planters can optimize nutrient delivery with sprayer-mounted streamers, boosting corn yields and cutting input costs.
00:00:00 So here in the Delta, we're just, uh, we're just right on the cusp of being able to, you know, get these corn planters to the field. 00:00:07 Corn and bean planters. And one thing that that, uh, you know, we talk about a lot is in furrow 00:00:12 and there's, there's so many different types of in furrow you can run. The first thing that to go to a farmer's mine, 00:00:17 or used to go to my mind prior to running in Frow was a popup phosphorus fertilizer. There's so many other opportunities when you put the in frow 00:00:25 on your planter that you can go with. If, you know, if you've got high phosphorus, fertilized, you know, fertilizer in the ground, then 00:00:32 that may not be the choice that you put in the, in frow. But there's so many different products. 00:00:36 You know, there's phosphorus stabilizers, there's uh, humic acids, there's different micronutrients. Um, you know, they have combo packs. 00:00:44 You can put individual if you wanna go with just a calcium product, you can do that. Or a zinc product. You can do that. 00:00:50 It's not all just about, you know, a phosphorus type fertilizer. We choose to actually run a combination of all those. 00:00:56 What we've seen in the research that we've done in the past is, you know, it's a synergistic effect with different products. 00:01:04 I've took the same products and put 'em, you know, take, took 'em out individually and run 'em and, you know, I get, 00:01:09 seems like I get a better buck by the synergy of putting several different products in there at the same time. 00:01:15 Whether it's a sugar, uh, you know, a phosphorous stabilizer, a phosphorous fertilizer, uh, humic acid. 00:01:22 Uh, we combine all those different things together, PGRs. So, you know, when we're talking about in furrow, 00:01:28 it's not just phosphorous fertilizer, even though we choose to use that in ours, 00:01:33 we feel like it gives the plant a little extra boost in the phosphorus that it needs the corn plant. 00:01:38 Uh, you know, there's several different ways to look at that. And in different areas you get different results. 00:01:44 Temple, uh, temple in Maryland gets a, a real good ROI outta running a infer on soybeans. We haven't seen that yet. 00:01:51 We've been trying to find that magic bullet with infer and soybeans. It doesn't work for us. We do see a benefit in the, 00:01:58 in furrow for corn. And adding all these products together even makes it that much better. 00:02:03 We took that same mentality into the cotton and we see it in cotton. So, you know, each individual area has different places 00:02:11 that the infra fertilizer is, or in there, I said it again, infra fertilizer that infra products are, are, are good. 00:02:19 You just gotta kind of figure out which ones those are. And you know, in my, I encourage you to have a research and development, um, budget or piece on your farm. 00:02:28 I stole this idea from listening to Chad Henderson in a meeting one day, but he asked the audience 00:02:34 to raise their hand if they knew any successful business in the United States that don't have an r 00:02:38 and d department embedded into their business or a budget for r and d. No one raised their hand. I used that same scenario 00:02:45 and other meetings, no one raised their hand. Any successful business in the United States has some kind of research 00:02:53 and development, you know, program to see what works best for them. And as farmers, we do everything different up 00:02:59 and down the country, east and west, north and south. You know, some things work the same, some things are different. 00:03:04 So I encourage you, you know, if you've got an infra kit on your planter, which most, you know, the low percentage of people do, I encourage you 00:03:11 to get a, uh, infra a system installed on your planter. There's so many different tools that gives you a toolbox with several different tools in it. 00:03:19 Like I said, I called it infer fertilizer a while ago because that's just like saying, Hey, do you want a Coke? Well, which Coke do you want? 00:03:26 Well, I want a Diet Coke, you know, it's, it's labeled as a coke because, and down here 'cause that's just the way it is. 00:03:31 And the same thing when you talk about infer, infer fertilizer, there's a lot of different products besides just fertilizer you can put in there. 00:03:38 So you got all these different tools in your toolbox, but you can't get 'em into the, you know, close to the seed if you don't have an 00:03:45 infrared system on your planter. Same thing with a tuba tube. You know, a UBA tube's another tool that you can use 00:03:51 to be able to, you know, apply different type products in your soil at the right place at the right time. 00:03:58 As you can see here, we've got a, what we call a three point hitch planter. So we're carrying this planter on the tractor. 00:04:04 The tank behind me carries a seed. There's no room for a tank anywhere else. So to be able to adapt to being able to put out the tub 00:04:10 of two we would to streamers on the back of a sprayer and everything's banded. We've learned that if, you know, 00:04:16 we can reduce fertilize rates, we can do a better job where we put the fertilizer where it needs to be and infer and two by two are two places that, 00:04:23 that you can really pump your crop up. Now I'm talking about in an irrigated situation, if you're dry land you may not wanna front load as much 00:04:30 'cause you don't know what kind of year you're gonna have. We pretty much know with our irrigation that these products 00:04:35 that we put out are gonna be utilized because if we get in a drought situation, we're able to turn on the water and keep the plant going 00:04:42 and keep the plant active and, and picking up these nutrients and products that we use. So that's where it works good for us. 00:04:48 The tub of two, the infer five years ago I was a dry only guy. Didn't have in furrow on my 00:04:54 planter probably seven years ago. We made that move. We made the move to, to better placement and abandon a lot of this stuff 00:05:02 so we could utilize the whole amount of the product that we're putting out. We were scattering across the ground in a 00:05:06 broadcast situation. Some of it was going in ditches and different places where it didn't need to be. So we started precision being able 00:05:13 to put our fertilizer into places it needs to be by using the infra and the two of two. And when you're putting out urea, 00:05:19 you might throw some bore on or something in there. But when you go to that two to two situation where you're putting out a liquid fertilizer on the band 00:05:27 right in the seed zone, then we're able to add products like cix and fulvic and uh, sugars and phosphorous, uh, stabilizers and nitrogen stabilizers 00:05:37 and different things to add to that value of the fertilizer, which has also allowed us to cut back on the amount 00:05:42 of fertilizer we use in this same scenario. So if you don't have an infra or two by two package on your planter, there is a way 00:05:49 to do it on a three point hitch raise bed system by using the sprayer and also gives you more tools to be able to work with 00:05:55 to, uh, enhance Your crop. For the, for the fall harvest, this is what we use in place of a two by two on our planter. 00:06:03 Uh, what we've done is we took an older sprayer, it had a 90 foot boom. We, we took the ends of the boom off, 00:06:09 we took a wide drop set of wide drop brackets and we actually mounted what we call a streamer on here. And this just goes over our, on our 38 inch wide row, 00:06:18 we've got a, what we call a 19 inch band. So we've got four streams going on that 19 inch band. So we're able to place our, our 28 0 0 5 on that band, 00:06:29 same as you would a dribble two by two on your planter. We just don't have the tanks on our planter with it being a three point hitch to be able to carry that. 00:06:36 So this sprayer is an older sprayer, a thousand gallons depending on the amount rate we're putting out. 00:06:40 We can get some pretty big acres out of this. And it gives us the opportunity to do what some of these other guys are doing with a two to two, 00:06:47 put our fertilized placed in the right spot on a band rate, reduce the amounts we put on there, 00:06:52 and also reduce the amount of the other inputs we're putting in there. So if a court of fulvic is a thing 00:06:58 to run on a broadcast rate, we can cut that down to, you know, half a half rate. 'cause we're placing on the band. 00:07:04 It's not out there in the middles too. So we're not, don't have any waste from that and are able to do a pretty good job. 00:07:10 Since we went to this, we've been able to increase our bushels of corn, you know, by putting it in the right place, increase the bushels 00:07:18 of corn acre, decrease the amount of fertilized breaker. So it's something that, that we're doing that's pretty cool. 00:07:24 I didn't come up with this idea. One of my buddies in Mississippi, Adrian, be come up with the idea of the streamer 00:07:29 and placing that fertilizer on a band 00:07:31.355 --> 00:07:32.915
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See All GrowersMatt Miles
McGehee, AR