Money and Manure

So using a newly published study on manure applications in irrigated corn and some newly acquired fertilizer prices, I decided that we needed to go ahead and apply manure to both circles where I am going to plant corn.

The manure started to arrive just as the last of the horses were leaving.


My main objection to using manure on my corn ground was the idea that manure has to be incorporated into the soil to be effective. The savings over conventional fertilizers alone, though was going to be significant enough that I felt I had little choice but to go ahead and get the manure applied and then disk it in. But then, as luck would have it, I attended the Soil Conservation meeting where we were treated to a presentation by the bran new agronomist at the Experiment Station (who just so happened to have a bran new PhD) about his bran new unpublished research on Phosphorus placement and the effects of P stratification. His research indicates that we really don't need to be worried about P stratification and that broadcasting P on the soil surface can be just as effective as banding it in the row. We asked him specifically about applying manure in a no-till system and he said "if it were me"(which means I like this guy already because too many of these academics are afraid to answer questions like this directly) he would apply the manure, run the sprinkler around once to minimize N volatilization losses, and be done with it. Awesome.