The Top 3 Nutrients Missing from Your Soil Test
It’s that time of year again—soil testing time. We know that soil testing can feel like a hassle sometimes. It can be expensive, and if you’re not sure what kind of testing is most valuable to you, it’s tempting to just choose the most affordable option.
Unfortunately, choosing to minimize your testing to save money can cost you in the long run. There are a lot of unpredictable forces affecting your farm—weather, market prices, policy—but comprehensive soil and tissue testing are tools available help reduce uncertainty. Only once you know what nutrients are available or missing from your soil and crop tissues, you can take informed steps to help your crops grow.
Of course, three of the most important nutrients your crops need to thrive are calcium, sulfur, and nitrogen. Despite their importance, some basic soil testing strategies neglect to measure them. These essential nutrients also contain another complexity: they are easily lost or not available in certain soil conditions, so the amount in the soil is not necessarily the amount that will be available to your crops when they need it. What matters most is the balance available in the soil and plant tissue as the demand for these nutrients changes through the growing season.
It’s critical to have the appropriate ratio of sulfur to nitrogen, as well as magnesium to calcium, in the plant. Depending on soil conditions, these nutrients can easily be lost or unavailable, either through leaching out with moisture throughout the season or due to imbalanced ratios.
An aerial view of a test field using SUL4R-PLUS
These drone pictures show sulfur-deficient corn in a field trial near Franklin, IN. The producer applied strips at three different rates of SUL4R-PLUS fertilizer (left to right: 100 lb/a, 150 lb/a, and 200 lb/a). By increasing their sulfate rates during their season, they saw an increase in yield and overall crop health.
SUL4R-PLUS fertilizer provides a continuous source of plant-available sulfate and calcium throughout the growing season. Some other sources/forms of sulfate or sulfur become unavailable over time, or, in some cases, are never available to the crop at all. Having plant-available calcium and sulfate available throughout the growing season also means you will optimize the uptake of other critical nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphates, potassium, and magnesium.
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