By Darren Hefty
As wheat comes off and silage is cut especially early this year due to drought, there is a great opportunity to do quite a few different things in these fields that you may not do on a normal year. One of them is manure application. While you may choose to wait until later in the fall, the same issues must be dealt with regardless of your application timing. You must minimize or eliminate leaching, denitrification, volatilization, and nutrient tie-up.
Remember that the smell of manure is NOT the smell of money. It is the smell of LOST money. If you can smell it, you’ve lost nutrients into the air. The goal is to keep as many nutrients as possible for the next crop. By applying manure when the soil cools down and injecting the manure deep into the soil, you will be able to get more benefit out of what many consider a waste product. Manure is the best fertilizer you can get, when used in moderation. However, it does require good management to maximize its yield impact and minimize its environmental footprint.
One of the things we’re doing on the Hefty Farm this fall is working with a relatively new product called More Than Manure (MTM). Used at an 18 ounce per acre rate, MTM combines the Phosphorus protection of AVAIL and the Nitrogen management you’d get from Nutrisphere-N all in a single product. More Than Manure can be used in both liquid and dry manure systems (we plan to use it with liquid dairy manure).
We’ll let you know over the next year what we’re seeing in our treated and untreated trials on our farm. Some farmers we work with have been involved in the testing and development of MTM and have seen noticeable results in terms of yield improvement, drastically lower odor, and increased plant uptake of nutrients. For more yield data and other information about this product, visit www.agphd.com/mtm.