Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Cold, I mean really cold… but it’s a good thing. <10ºF last night.
Today, CPS is able to apply the nitrogen top-dress fertilizer to the wheat crop. The frozen soil allows the applicator traffic to roll across the fields without making ruts or marks in the soil. This application is made up of two kinds of nitrogen formulations, a 60/40 blend of urea and ESN. Urea is a granular, organic form of nitrogen, perfect for this type of cold-weather application. It is not appropriate for warm-weather application due to volatilization. ESN is essentially an encapsulated form of urea. This becomes a sort-of delayed release nitrogen source, extending the life of the activity of the nitrogen. Instead of splitting the applications into two separate operations, we blend ESN into this one time over the field.
This is the air-flow application machine operated by Gary Kail of CPS. It is guided by GPS, and it it very accurate.
See this machine in action by going to our YouTube site… Click here.
On the soil surface, you can see the granules of urea and ESN. The urea is white and the ESN is green. The next rain or snow will take these nutrients down into the soil.
The wheat has a great appearance for this time of year, looking robust, strong, and healthy–exceptionally so this year. Maybe it’s because the previous crop of corn, stressed by the drought of 2012, left more of the soil nutrients available to the following wheat. It just looks more uniform and thick for this time of year.
John is meeting with our Capstan rep, Chris Blankenberger, to install a software update into our anhydrous ammonia applicator’s N-Ject control system. We had some difficulties with the control system last spring, and we are hopeful that Mr. Blankenberger has made the needed corrections. He will assist us again when we begin the use of that machine this spring, hopefully in late March. This control system works in conjunction with the GS2 Rate Controller integrated into our John Deere 2510H, 60-foot applicator machine. We are more confident we will be able to accurately apply our corn crop nitrogen using variable-rate technology this year.
This chilly day is working to help us! The wind has died down, making the cold more bearable to people. I don’t mind 15ºF, if there isn’t any wind.
