Farming Video | Rethinking Phosphorus Strategy with Temple Rhodes

3 Sep 255m 0s

Is Broadcast Phosphorus Still Worth It? Temple Rhodes Says No.

Fertilizer prices are sky-high, and for a lot of growers, that $1,000 DAP tag is a real gut check. Temple Rhodes and Tommy Roach from Nachurs are cutting through the noise to talk about a smarter way to feed your crop.

Temple’s been ahead of the curve, ditching dry broadcast P years ago. Instead, he spoon feeds his phosphorus throughout the season—four targeted shots that match crop needs at the right time. No waste. No guesswork. Just better results.

Tommy backs it up with real data: Only about 20% of broadcast P actually gets used by the plant. That’s like throwing $80 out the truck window for every hundred you spend. And it’s not just about uptake—broadcasting with KCL adds salt that can wreck your biology and shut down the whole system.

From early row development to grain fill, phosphorus timing matters more than ever. Temple’s approach is all about feeding the crop during key stages—tassel, black layer, and beyond—not just dumping it in the field and hoping for the best.

It’s time to rethink phosphorus. Spoon feed your crop. And while you’re at it, spoon feed your finances too.

This video includes paid sponsors of XtremeAg.farm. The views & opinions expressed in this video are those of XtremeAg.farm and are based solely on the experiences of the XtremeAg team. The use of brand names and/or any mention or listing of specific products or services herein is solely for educational purposes and does not imply endorsement by XtremeAg.

00:00:00 Hey guys, it's Temple Roach. I'm here with Tommy Roach. And um, as Tommy says today we're gonna talk about the Elephant in the room. 00:00:08 And the elephant in the room is Because here's why. And this is, this has really nothing to do with Temple. So I can step out the video. 00:00:15 He's, he's been dealing with where to put phosphorus for years, but for 90% of the population, the fact of thousand dollar dap right now, 00:00:26 scared the living jeebers out of people. So what are we gonna do with phosphorus for next year, for 2026? 00:00:33 Are we gonna keep doing what we're doing? I think not because there's, there's better places to put phosphorus than broadcasting it out here 00:00:44 before you even plant a crop. So what Temple does, he's been doing it for years, is he quit doing that 00:00:52 and he spoon feeds his phosphorus basically four different times during the season 00:00:58 If it gets droughty. You know what I mean? Like let's say it quits Dr, it quits raining here, I'm half right, like no more foliar, 00:01:05 but like I'm doing it a completely different way. Like there's no dry in mine. I'm not putting it in my two by two anymore. 00:01:10 So it's out of my whole program, but I'm just, I know that I'm trying to influence certain windows, right? 00:01:17 I'm trying to make rows around and then I need a little bit of vegetative growth and then I need to ramp up 00:01:22 and then I need to get to the end. And every time that I'm putting SRUs in, I'm doing it for something, for a reason. 00:01:28 For a reason. Am I doing it for rows around maybe am I doing it for energy? Maybe a lot of times I'm putting it in the plant 00:01:34 and driving energy in the plane to suck something else in, right? And most of the time it's 00:01:39 because like back here, I'm doing just enough there to give the plant a bunch of energy to suck in potassium because potassium is gonna, what's going 00:01:46 to make some chronic rate. So the majority of the population believes that this is where you need phosphorus out here. 00:01:56 But in all actuality, 75% of your phosphate needs is on the back. It's easier. Look, look at up 00:02:03 This, yeah. Okay. On The plan. Like that's where after, After tassel, tassel and forward, this is where you need your phosphorus. 00:02:13 If you're broadcasting all your phosphate out there, do we think it's gonna be available here? What do they say? 20% at max. 00:02:24 At max is Your efficiency. That's right. So Imagine taking a hundred dollars, the deposits in the bank and say, 00:02:29 and they say, we're gonna keep it all, we're gonna let you have $20 at the, that's what we have. Right? And that's a problem. We've talked about this before. 00:02:39 Everybody that's a irrigator will irrigate all the way up through brown stuff through by black land, right? 00:02:45 But yet we don't think that there's new nutrients that need to be there through black layer. 00:02:50 Fosters is the biggest toll preference and we're missing out on all of that. That's where the most amount of yield that we had come in, 00:02:57 the most difference we've ever made was there. And I would've never guessed it, I was only going for energy. 00:03:03 I didn't realize that I had serious needs That I needed to. So I'll, I'll even go one step further. 00:03:10 So for all this step map that's put out, stare the tip rides with KCL for every UL of KCL that goes out, 60% of it's K, 00:03:25 40% is salt. And we've been talking about how to build salt biology to help with phosphorus, to help with plant 00:03:36 that salt mode that you're putting out there with that phosphate. It's doing nothing but tearing it, tearing down that bottle. 00:03:45 If we get nothing out of this spoon, feed your p and k to where plant needs it based on what's going on, whether it's to get it out 00:03:59 of the ground, rows around length and fill it. That's how we need to do it. I'll leave it at this and then 00:04:08 I'm gonna leave everybody alone. Um, I thought this chart for now three years, cut out all my driveability. 00:04:16 I didn't know that I would do that. Well just by filing this chart where most people fall in that 60 to 70 some percent range, 00:04:24 we fell right into the high nineties just by filing this chart. He didn't do anything else. But we don't know 00:04:30 what this fee fees, uh, phosphorus and K. So we are also looking at specific micronutrients to facilitate that plant as we go. 00:04:41 'cause it's got, it's, they're all here. Right? That makes sense. So, um, guys, it's time for us to take a little bit better control of our finances 00:04:50 and spoon feeding this. 00:04:52.715 --> 00:04:54.325