I know most of you all know this stuff but a quick reminder can’t hurt…

N-Serve/Spring NH3 Application: N-Serve is just as important in the spring as it is in the fall: N-Serve keeps nitrogen in the ammonium form longer…after it changes to nitrate it is susceptible to leaching and denitrification…I know we are relatively dry now but if we get wet enough to be saturated for a few days later this spring (and it usually always happens at some point…even in a dry year) we can lose a lot of nitrogen in the nitrate form very fast (especially if it happens when we are warmer)…keeping nitrogen in the ammonium form longer reduces this risk…only way we lose ammonium is if we lose dirt because the ammonium nitrogen is tied to the soil…think back to the positive/negative charge stuff back in high school chemistry...soil has a negative charge and ammonium is positive…after N becomes nitrate its charge changes to negative just like the soil…that’s why it is susceptible to leaching through the soil with water. Denitrification is more complicated but that is where we lose a lot really fast when it gets wet…just keep N in the ammonium form and we don’t have to worry about it.

Micros: If at all possible we need to always add 10-15 lbs of sulfur to our nitrogen when topdressing (I know most of our topdressing is done for the first shot but there is still some to do…). Same goes for corn; 10-15 lbs is almost always a good idea…nothing necessarily special about wheat and corn as beans use a lot of sulfur too but they require it later in the season when the ground has warmed up…warmer ground allows more sulfur to be released from the soil (mineralized from organic matter)…wheat and corn don’t have this luxury…they need it when the ground is still cold/cool. Higher yields and reduction of sulfur in our rainfall (when did you last hear about “acid rain”…when I was a kid that was the “global warming” of our time…reducing sulfur emissions in the air has decreased the amount we get in rainfall) have increased the importance of sulfur fertilizer. Zinc is another that we should be looking at…we usually go off soil test with zinc but if you don't have a soil test or a history of using zinc then you’re not going to go wrong with a pound or so…there is some concern about being able to disperse a low rate of zinc and MicroEssentials SZ is a great way to mitigate this concern (as every pellet of phosphorus has some sulfur and zinc on it) but we have increased zinc levels at Mexico over the last 20 years in our vrt program using relatively low rates of zinc spread with both an air machine and spinners so if we are finding the zinc with a soil probe (which is reflected in the soil tests) then I think our plants are finding it too…pound or so every year is a good program to get into. Thanks for reading,