I heard about this at a conference today. Veris has a soil probe that uses Near InfraRed to analyze and record soil properties on the fly. It appears that so far they just measure carbon but I can see this being tremendously useful for measuring phosphorous levels across a field. Cliff Loewen and Scott Dick [...]
Richard Zollinger pointed out research on the NDSU-AGDAKOTA mailing list. Research Scientist Pirkko Laitinen in Finland shows that there is Significant glyphosate herbicide transport to plant roots. One of the things that makes glyphosate such a useful herbicide is that it breaks down very quickly. Even crops that are glyphosate intolerant can be seeded within [...]
How old is dirt? Ethan Siegel answers that question at his Starts with a Bang blog. Be sure to read the comments as some take issue with his conclusion. John Heard discussed the age of Manitoba’s soils in a recent print article. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep a copy of it, but as I recall he [...]
I’ve had to look this up twice now, so I thought I would post it for anyone who is interested in the soils of southeast Manitoba. It’s a minor classification error in the electronic version of the reports versus the text version. Here’s the problem: In the Agricultural Interpretation Database by Municipality for Hanover (hanover_shp), [...]
When looking at nutrients for crops, two key figures to keep in mind are crop uptake versus crop removal. Crops require a lot of nutrients to grow but some portion of those nutrients are left behind when the crop is harvested. Crop uptake of a nutrient is the amount of a nutrient used by a [...]
Want to build a barn, dig a lagoon, install a septic system, or start irrigating specialty crops? You’d better know what kinds of soil you’re dealing with or your project may quickly turn out to be an anchor around your neck. The quickest way of finding out about the soils in an area is to [...]
