Snipe - I don't have any testing that would help you, just a couple comments. Have been using Alpine for 10 years or so.

Last few years have had some good chats with a fellow from Ontario, who is with "Farm For Profit". They market a starter fert (3-18-18) which is 100% ortho/phos. This is made for them by Alpine. Anyway he was surprised that I was not supplementing the Alpine with extra phos!!

My rate has been about 12-14 l/acre until this year. This year I am up to about 16-18 l/acre. Expensive, but for my set-up increasing alpine is my best option.

Have a program started where I am spreading K every 3-4 years. Next time will be to try some test strips with P added.

 

I have used Alpine for 5 years and it does work( can send you some pics of a test strip on canola from this year if you want). The question of mining the soil will always linger and according to the fertilizer experts, it is. I have always went at the 4 imp gallon/acre rate and would even consider going higher if and when commodity prices are higher. I am also considering floating on some phos with my sulphur this fall. I can recommend this product based on a few factors, but also realize that everybody's set up is different and it's not for everyone. If you have a smaller tank and want to maximize the efficiency of it then Alpine is a great fit. Since Alpine is an ortho phos if you encounter dry conditions in the spring then I believe Alpine is better than dry, also under cold conditions because it is in the plant available form. Alpine is not corrosive either which is a very nice feature. I could never make the claim that Alpine will produce better yields than dry but I can say that it's at least equal. Hope this helps a bit Snipe.

 

Not corrosive to steel, but keep it away from aluminum!!

 

This topic has been beat to death. I can't comment on your operation but for mine I can't justify the cost as I don't see any economic benefits.

Dry phos is 100% ortho as well although I bet your alpine salesman didn't share that info.

 

When you look at the phos removal rates that some of these large crops take out I think a lot of us have been under applying phos and it will likly catch up to us at some time. With alpine I do not know how you could afford to put back what the crop removed.

 

i realize it's a expensive source of Phos but it has a few advantages I like, it's plant available right away and can be used for carrying micros and innoculant. Has anyone also put down dry Phos at the same time to prevent soil levels from depleting?

 

Dry is also plant available right away unless you are seeding into complete dust and at that point your seed won't be needing much p anyways. Which micros are you adding? Most micros can be purchased as dry product as well at a fraction of the price of the liquid forms. Are you innoculating soybeans? We use both dry and liquid innoculant but we never use liquid with any fertilizer. Trials done in Mb have shown consistent yield decreases using alpine in furrow with soybeans even mixed half and half with water. We did a trial using alpine and crappy old 10-34 in corn a few years ago although the difference was insignificant the 10-34 won. The price difference was not insignificant. Alpine is a great product and if it was priced competitively I would use it especially for corn but I still can't justify the extra expense. Lots of people use it and grow great crops but lots grow great crops without it too.

 

I would encourage you to set up your drill for liquid, not just because of Alpine, but in my opinion having done this for the past 5 years, it takes your fertility management to a whole new level that you can't even begin to do with a dry program. For example, I was always frustrated taking soil tests and seeing a micro deficiency in my soil, yet not being able to address the problem properly. My fertilizer dealer stated he could only add between 1-2 lbs per acre of each so it would not be toxic to the crop. So how exactly do you disperse 2 handfuls of powder properly over 43560 square feet? The idea is that if you do this for many years, eventually you can build up the levels in the soil and then see the benefit. But what if I didn't want to wait that long? His answer was to forget the micros, and put the money into more N, and I will gain the benefit there. This made no sense at all. Having raised livestock over the years, I have experienced firsthand what happens when you ignore trace elements and run with deficiencies for an extended period of time. If this applies to animals, why would plants be any different? With a liquid kit, I am able to address the micro issue very simply by adding it to the tank along with my melted N and Alpine G22. Every field can have a specific recipe created for it based on its own nutrient requirements. Now, when I place this in the seedrow, EVERY seed gets a shot to help it start off on the right direction. Also, because the head is formed between the 2-4 leaf stage, I am front end loading my macros AND micros to be available immediately when the plant requires.
I'm not saying that this is the only way to go, but I am saying I have yet to see a solution for the micro situation that utilizes exclusively dry fert. My vote- get the kit on your drill. It will pay for itself quickly. Mine has many times over. Hope this helps,


Patrick

 

I have yet to see a solution for the micro situation that utilizes exclusively dry fert.

Here is one: Bentonite Sulphur/Micronutrients

I tried the liquid kit on the drill for a couple of years as well as the micro's and saw no advantage over dry phosphate, you simply can't put down enough # of the micro's to build levels. The Tigersul stuff is a fraction of the cost per # and you can blend it with your other dry fertilizer. I agree with your points on not ignoring the micro's but there are much cheaper ways to build soil fertility.:wink:

 

I guess I didn't clarify myself properly by finishing my thoughts.The point I was making is that the reason I like liquid is the fact every plant can get attention with the liquid system immediately the year of application, rather than waiting 5, 6 or more years to see a benefit as you are "investing", but seeing no tangible benefit, and consequently one can assume a return. . You can't do that with dry on micros. Not only that, once you are in the "liquid frame of mind", you can fine tune your fertility even further with foliar applications at herbicide time and at fungicide time, based on the results from tissue tests on the crop. You can't do that with dry either. It is a total approach, and it usually starts in the seedrow. At least that's what I found. I am not convinced personally that liquid will actually build the soil levels, but that is not what I am looking for it to do. I am using it for the immediacy of the crop at hand, and granular can be used for the maintenance/buildup of soil levels. Having said that, I have been monitoring our soil baseline levels, and after 4 cropping seasons I can confirm that we have NOT seen a drop in our P levels from when we started using liquid, contrary to what many had warned us about, yet our crop yields continue to maintain or increase. Research from University of California, Davis has years of replicated research to reinforce this concept, but that is another discussion. I have noticed a drop in K, and we are addressing that this year with a granular supplementation.
As far as cheaper ways, I have to disagree with you on the micro point. What do you consider cheaper? How do you quantify that? For our program, we can apply all our deficient micros for approx. $6.50-$9.00/ acre, and as verified by tissue test have the problem addressed across the entire field, impacting the field response and yield return, plant health, lodging issues, etc. With dry I don't believe there is an adequate way to quantify those numbers, so to compare the two would be difficult at best.


Patrick

 

Have you lifted your unit up and watched it run? It comes out in drips unless you are bulking it up with water or something? The Tigersul boron is 2% so you can put down all your sulfur needs and get the boron spread throughout the seedrow too. I will pick on boron because it is very common to have low boron, for sure around here. Here is the breakdown:
>Alpine boron was $4.40/liter last I checked. At the specific gravity they list on their website Alpine - Fertilizer Products it has 0.06#/liter of boron for that $4.40 That means it costs $73.33 for every # of boron you want to apply, however you want to apply it.
>Tigersul 2% boron at the price I paid last fall after you take out the sulfur at cost worked out to $4.41/#. The product I used the year before(nubor 10 I believe it was called) was nearly $10/#.
So for the same price I can have 16.6 times more actual boron and I would be willing to bet there would be more access in the seedrow too!

You will never build levels with foliar or liquid in furrow(unless you are made of money). But maybe that's what the liquid sales guy wants to happen...:wink:

 

I still fail to see why you can't do all the same things with dry. Heck we can vary 3-4 different dry products individually if we want. You can buy lots of dry fertilizers impregnated with micros for even distribution, still way cheaper. I think your dealer is a bit fos imo but I'm sure he likes you buying all the high margin products. Your land must be a lot different than mine. I have never got a response from a micro applied foliar yet.

 

I have considered this alot and I think there is an advantage to a liquid product applied at a low rate. You can easily bulk it up by adding water. Innoculant is a great thing to put through such a system. Does the system have to by flushed with water to ensure the innoculant doesn't die? I'm not sure how much pressure they can take.

Back to foliar fertilizer. Foliar applied micros can't fix the damage that's already done based on a deficiency in a tissue test, it is too late. This is the epitome of the snake-oil business, they come trolling along, preying on a farmer who feels like his crops should be better and they get an awful lot of them to bite. That jug full of promises would be better spent in the spring, in the seed row, when the plant needs it. The other option is take your snake oil budget and go to vegas. Atleast you know what the deal is upfront.

 

Three seasons ago we rigged our drill for liquid and did some alpine trials in wheat. We did this partly because our wheat yields have been in decline lately.

We did straight alpine at their recommended rate (which is low by the way, maybe 20# of phos) vs alpine with 20# pounds of dry (11-52). On another field we did alpine vs a similar rate of 10-34. What we found is that more phos yielded better. Straight alpine wasn't enough. And straight alpine was no different than straight 10-34. There was even a slight yield increase in the 10-34 over the alpine but not statistically significant.

I showed our results that showed Alpine alone wasn't enough phos to the Alpine rep and he said, oh that's interesting, alpine is really helping your crop use all that extra phos better. Hilarious. And of course he didn't comment on the fact that 10-34 plus extra dry worked every bit as well on our wheat as alpine did.

Last year we put down 20# P from 10-34, and another 20# P from MESz in the drill. We had spectacular yields in wheat.

This year we're back to straight dry P, in the form of MESz. About 40#/ac P.

The alpine literature talks about it being more readily available and in a more efficient form. It actually says that # for # it's more efficacious that any other form of P so you can use a lot of less of it. This is pure nonsense. We talked to a farmer that has been using alpine as his sole P source for quite a few years and felt it was indeed letting him use less P. But when went and really looked at the soil reports over the last few years he realized his P levels in the soil were steadily declining. I think he still uses alpine now, but he also puts on dry now.

So we feel that putting on adequate amounts of P is very important, regardless of the source. I also believe strongly that putting down half or more of our dry N in the form of ESN has increased our wheat yields.

 

I have no doubt there are many of you that have great success with Alpine. I myself have zero experience with the product. What I do have experience with is dealing with rapidly deteriorating available phosphate levels. In our area we have been fortunate to have had a few good crops strung together, and with increasing yields, and the introduction to soybeans, phosphate levels have begun to drop fast. We have changed our phosphate program to try and address this by simply using more phos and also applying phos with our soys. The scary thing is that realistically all we expect to do is now maintain the current phosphate levels we have now, or at best very slowly rebuild them. I believe it takes 20lb of applied P ABOVE what that crop removes to gain one PPM. That means rebuilding levels is very expensive and will take a long time.
Back to Alpine, some neighbours feel that they were kind of lead down the garden path by the Alpine salesman. It seems that this depletion of phos levels has evolved even quicker on their farms. It has gotten to the point in some cases where you can see it from the road (purple corn). This obviously can't all be blamed on the salesman, it was maybe used irresponsibly. But i do believe the sales pitch is too good to be true and attractive to somebody looking to cut corners on their phos program.
I'm sure many of you use Alpine successfully and supplement it properly.
My two cents, spend the money on lots of 11-52. Dealing with low PPM is not fun.

 

This response is a bit long because I am trying to compress a 30-60 minute seminar presentation into as few words as possible and still deliver the message, so bear with me.

As a consulting agronomist, I work with all kinds of fertilizer and fertilizer programs. After seeing the results of several years of experience, I now encourage all of my clients to install a liquid kit on all of their drills. My observations are taken from watching and working with several different clients on a wide variety of crops. This is because a liquid kit increases the options available at seeding time. A two-tank drill becomes a three-tank drill, etc.. I generally take the dry phos right out of the spring drill program and depending on the number of tanks available, I will program the NKS for a two-tank system or an N and a KS for a three-tank system. I am also very careful about how much dry product I put down with the seed. This also means that I like mid-row banders and/or fall dry blends.

We all know that urea burns and if a prill is next to a seed, it will invariably take out the seed. Dry potash is much the same and, interestingly, so is the most common form of dry phos or MAP (11-52-0). From the physics side of things, dry fertilizer has to first dissolve to be available and if there is competition for moisture, the fertilizer prill will get it first. Also, phos moves 1mm, so it needs to be right next to the seed, but if it is right next to the seed, roots are burned or at least seriously singed and often, so is the seed. This is not generally noticed because people are not looking for it. When you understand the process and start looking for it, you will often see seedling mortality with most dry fertilizers, something you don't see with Alpine G22. The seedling mortality from dry fertililzers in the end affects yield because of reduced plant population and most growers are seeding too light already because they are seeding by bushels and not by TKW (thousand kernel weight).

Any seed that is laterally removed from the phos, depending upon the type of root system, may not be able to access that phos for some time. Just for explanation, if you are seeding on 10" centres and applying 30lbs. actual P as MAP, there is about 2.25-2.5" between prills. If phos only moves 1 mm and the seed next to the prill gets taken out, what are the other seeds getting? Since phos is important for driving roots, you want this available the sooner the better. As for the micros, the zinc is responsible for root and stem orientation and the boron is responsible for head size. This is why we are looking for a delivery system for these nutrients. In the dry form, these micros are toxic because they are too concentrated. Hence, the liquid system is dribbling a fairly continuous stream so virtually all seeds get some fertility, providing a better distribution of not only the N, P and K in the G22 but the added micros as well. I also prefer the Alpine G22 over the 10-34-0 for various reasons. Yes, the G22 is more expensive. It is also less corrosive and less aggressive with a lower salt index than 10-34-0. In cool spring situations with cold soils, the response to the G22 is quicker with the higher levels of ortho phos. And, yes, I do explain to clients that MAP is 100% ortho but because it is not liquid, it needs to dissolve before it is available. We did a side-by-side on sugar beets, seeded at 0.5-0.75" into good moisture and had a one day earlier emergence of the Alpine over the 10-34-0 and a two day earlier emergence over the dry check. We also had some seedling damage with the dry where a prill was next to a seed. We have had similar results with corn, cereals and oilseeds. In our country, that one day earlier in the spring is three days in the summer and at harvest. If you are seeding later in the spring, into warm soils, there is not much difference in emergence between the G22 and the 10-34-0 but there often is with dry, depending on moisture conditions. At that time, it is more an issue of handling and availability.

In our high pH soils, I have generally found that MAP is about 8-12% efficient or available. In other words, if you apply 25 lbs. actual P, you are, in reality, getting about 2-3 lbs. available to the plant. With liquids, I find that we are getting 35-45% availability, so 10 lbs. liquid actual means 3.5-4.5 lbs. to the plant, and more evenly distributed. The other thing that I have found from experience is that N use efficiency is increased. When I am doing crop plans and I know that the client has a liquid kit and is using Alpine G22, on HRSW, instead of 2.6 lbs. N per bushel of target yield, I can use 2.0, and for canola, instead of 3.3 lbs. N per bu., I can use 3.0. If you have 1000 acres of HRSW at a 50 bu. target and urea is $0.50/lb., that's a savings of $15,000. And no, I don't get reduced yields with the lower fertilizer rates. Because there are greater efficiencies with split applications of nutrients, I will do a dry fall or spring blend, a dry drill blend, a liquid drill blend in the seedrow, followed by at least one foliar at herbicide time and hopefully another at flag on cereals or early bloom on canola or at fungicide timing on other crops, whichever works, based on tissue sample results so we are responding to the needs of the plant.

As to the issue of mining the soil with liquids, it is true that we generally are not addressing removal levels, but then neither are we doing so with dry. In comparing liquid users to dry users, over time, they are both reducing background levels at similar rates. This is not always the case but it is more often than not, especially with those who are applying 20-30 lbs. actual P with a crop. So, if you are concerned about background levels, use a dry application in the fall or even the spring. This can be blended with a potash application, which most everyone should be doing as well. Conventional wisdom has told us that on these high pH soils, we don't need to add K because we have lots of it. The problem is that we have been removing it gradually over the years and have upset the balances, particularly the K:Mg balance so even if we have 400 lbs. on the soil test, it may not be plant available. Another thing that I have learned from experience is that if we have a K problem, and we generally do, for every 50 lbs. actual of K in the fall, I can reduce my N requirements by about 20 lbs. By applying the K in the fall, it gives it more time to break down and there is less tie-up in the spring.

I saw a comment that if you have an issue with plant nutrition, add more N. That is a very common response, generally by those who do not understand balanced nutrition. Yes, more N will give you a response but generally, it exacerbates the existing problem, which is usually a shortage of P, K or S or a combination thereof. It is all about balanced nutrition and the efficient as well as effective delivery of fertility. This is another reason why I like G22. It is a good delivery system and very safe, whether in the seedrow or as a foliar. Always remember that N, P, K and S are for building and growing crop while micros are for tweaking production. And if you would like further explanation and more details/experiences, contact me directly or come to one of my seminars.

As in most cases, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Plant nutrition is a complex and interactive process. You can't take just one nutrient and address in on its own. You need balanced nutrition, including micros, if you are going to push production.

Gerald L. Anderson, P.Ag.

 

In our high pH soils, I have generally found that MAP is about 8-12% efficient or available. In other words, if you apply 25 lbs. actual P, you are, in reality, getting about 2-3 lbs. available to the plant. With liquids, I find that we are getting 35-45% availability, so 10 lbs. liquid actual means 3.5-4.5 lbs. to the plant, and more evenly distributed.

I often see the 8-12% efficient comment. What that says to me is that you may need to wait 10 years after you switch from dry in order to actually see if you are mining the soil and if there is a yield response. If the efficiency is that poor, you are using the MAP applied a decade before with your current crop. And that doesn't make for good research.



Glad to see you talking about removal rates and applying dry for maintenance of P levels. Many liquid salesmen do not admit that.

 

AgAdventure have you done any testing with S-15 in regards to seedling safety?

 

AgAdventure , I appreciate your response and from my little experience and knowledge it seems very logical and I do agree that balanced nutrition should be the goal and a sustained balance at that. My question is where and when do economics come into play? All the knowledge and expertise in the world and yet when it comes to running the farm business with the volatility farmers are exposed to where is the line drawn in the sand? Im interested in the benefits and uses for G22 and I see areas where it would be more beneficial than others but how can one justify using all the above products both fall and spring applied in order to maintain or "build" that balanced nutrition? typically I would have a set budget for the crop that year and reassess that once emerged and established then apply crop protection products and foliar fertilizer as the potential ( and commodity pricing ) increases. I hope the direct of my question is somewhat clear, I quite enjoy this topic but its sometimes hard to put thoughts into words. I have always wondered if my goal was to apply approx. 35lbs actual P if there would be a economic benefit to apply 15-20lbs actual P in 11-52 form and the remainder to reach the targeted amount with G22 all while keep the cost similar to what it would have been had I applied ALL 35lbs actual 11-52 or is that possible without sacrificing that balance?

 

Well I don't buy a lot of it but some I agree with. For instance I have never seen a crop emerge one day later be a week later in the fall that is just not right. Do a trial using no phos and the emergence will be faster yet but the yield will suck. Usuall a crop that emerges a week later is only three days later in the fall. That is something every farmer knows imo. i don't care if there is a tiny bit of root toxicity in the first two weeks of the plants life all I care about is final yield and cost to get it. That's where alpine fails. I know it's a good product but so is 11-52.