Three fertilizer tests to lower your risk

Here are three low-cost, low-risk tests to provide valuable new observations on yield potential, major hidden soil nutrient issues and right rates.

Targeted soil samples

The most common soil sampling practice is to collect one composite sample per field. An appropriate composite is based on 12-20 sub-samples or “cores” from the most productive areas. However, by avoiding low-producing areas, you may be missing critical insight to boost yield potential in those areas. With a second (or third) targeted compost, you may discover something that could be solved, or at least improved, with some targeted management.

COST: Around $100 per field to collect and analyze one targeted soil test.

Lyle Cowell, senior agronomist with Nutrien, provides this real example where he sampled the usual higher-yielding area and targeted a poor-yielding area in the same field. “A sample site in the poor area of a field may be of as much or more value than a composite sample from the good areas of a field,” Cowell says “The composite sample missed that a potential huge part of the field was potassium deficient and that a targeted high rate of potassium in this area could greatly improve the yield potential.”

Nitrogen strips

Whatever nitrogen rate you use, try a few strips with 125 or 150 per cent of that rate. Compare yields with the combine yield monitor or, ideally, carts with scales. Results may support existing practices or identify a potential adjustment. If yields do not increase in the strips, perhaps another nutrient is limiting. Or perhaps weather and soil conditions simply don’t support higher yields. All of these are valuable learnings.