As in most sales jobs having customers believe in the product you are selling is the best reward and leads to more satisfied customers. I am happy to share one such story from a customer and a consulting agronomist, Steve Larocque http://beyondagronomy.com/.

– Keith

Accidental trial shows importance of P in furrow

There are two crops that I find the most response to seedplaced phosphorus and they are barley and canola. Today, I’ll share an example about malt barley.

The photo here is of our barley taken two days ago and you’ll notice a difference in maturity from left to right. The crop is at full head emergence on the left side and 3-5 days behind on the right side with heads emerging. The fertilizer blend I applied was 55-30-50-6 sidebanded with 8.8 lbs of liquid P205 seedplaced using Alpine 6-22-6. However, during seeding the electric pump on my liquid kit failed. Instead of waiting until the next day before the new pump arrived I went ahead and planted another 60 acres of barley (right side of photo). Soil test levels hover around 40 lbs of P205 so I thought the risk of less seedplaced phosphorus would be low. Clearly, I was wrong! It did make a difference.

I can’t emphasise enough the importance of seedplaced phosphorus and its impact on vigour, frost tolerance and maturity. We’ve had one of the warmest springs on record with soil temperature above 10C at the beginning of seeding and yet we’re still seeing responses to seed placed phosphorus compared to side banded phosphorus. When you’re planning your fertility program next fall, be sure to create a specific seed placed blend and move the mobile nutrients like nitrogen and sulphur to the side or mid row to avoid seedling damage.