Unlocking Potassium Potential on Your Farm: Expert Potassium Management Tips

11 Dec 243m 44s

Potassium is a critical nutrient for crop health, particularly during the reproductive stages of corn and soybeans. It significantly impacts grain quality, seed weight, and test weights. Farmers are encouraged to monitor potassium levels using base saturation, aiming for an optimal range of 6–10%. In regions with low base saturation, supplemental strategies are vital. Dry weather can exacerbate potassium deficiencies, often mistaken for nitrogen issues, due to reduced soil moisture impeding nutrient uptake.

00:00:06 Potassium is a very important nutrient when we go to grain field corn, for instance, right? When you go from vegetation into reproduction, 00:00:16 the potassium uptake of that plant is humongous. Uh, soybeans, same way. Guys need to look at take pay really close attention 00:00:25 to the potassium on a base saturation level. So what's your base saturation? Because there, there's a level there that you need to be at. 00:00:33 Now they say that the magical number is somewhere between six and 10%. 00:00:39 If you can get to four, it's great. My base saturation here is high. I know a lot of guys out in the Midwest, 00:00:45 they got extremely low base sat, um, on potassium. So that potassium is very important in the grain quality and the grain integrity that these plants produce. 00:00:57 It's just like with our own bodies. Potassium is a very good source of vitamins and nutrients that we need to uptake in. 00:01:05 And the plants are the same way, just extremely important. Tends to get overlooked at times. 00:01:11 We feed potassium all throughout the year and we kind of spoon feed potassium because I can get it into the plant 00:01:17 and I can drive it into the plant. You think of it like this, like I got money that I'm putting in the bank that I don't go in there 00:01:23 and I don't try to touch, but I, it's, it's in there building a base, right? And then I got potassium 00:01:28 or money in, in my pocket that I'm working off of. And there's two separate things and that's how I look at potassium. 00:01:36 The potassium demand shows up more. So when the dry weather, certain environmental conditions and you'll see yellow one 00:01:45 and you'll typically think it's nitrogen, but most of the time it's actually a potassium deficiency from dry weather. 00:01:52 And you know, you bought enough nutrients and put 'em out there and you've done a good job. But the problem is there's not enough moistures in the soil 00:02:00 to make that nutrient available to the crop where the roots can metabolize it and bring it up into the plant. 00:02:07 So we're seeing more and more of what's called dry weather potassium deficiency. And that's a tough one to overcome unless you're irrigating. 00:02:18 So I got my, my base out there and that's with my dry fertility and I know that I'm continuously adding there. 00:02:25 And how I utilize that is, is I look at the crop removal every year of how much potassium I take off. 00:02:31 So let's say that I bail my straw or whatever, I know that I'm taking off more potassium. I know on those acres that I have to add back at least that 00:02:39 to keep my base or my bank account at the same level. So it keeps building for me. Then I go in and I feed my potassium 00:02:49 all throughout the season. Potassium acetate, acetate portion is a driver. Just think of it like it drives it into that plant. 00:02:56 So what it does in corn and soybeans is it aids weight. You know, everybody thinks that zinc and boron add weight and they do, don't get me wrong, they do. 00:03:05 Um, but to the potassium is a big piece of this. Each time that we go across the field with any application especially, and the reproductive end on corn 00:03:17 and soybeans, both, we drag a lot of potassium into there and we've been increasing our test weights. 00:03:22 We've been increasing seed size every year and we're continuously getting better with doing that. So that's how I use potassium and the potassium ace acetate. 00:03:30 I look at it as a two piece program. There's one from the bottom and one from the top, and we're gonna meet in the middle 79 00:03:35.925 --> 00:03:37.285