I attended the Agvise 2011 Canadian Soil Fertility Seminar in Carman last week. There were a lot of really impressive speakers there. Here are a few of my notes on what was covered. Nutrient Trends – Using the Data. John Heard John Heard led off by letting us know that Better Crops Magazine has recent [...]
I recently ran across this paper Status of Selected Trace Elements in Agricultural Soils of Southern Manitoba and it has a lot of interesting information on trace elements in Manitoba. One of our clients has been looking into possible Molybdenum issues in his soybeans, so it was informative to read that “Too many factors influence [...]
I recently ran across this presentation on Soil Survey in Manitoba (PDF) by Sheila Meyer, R. Wu, and Y. Zhang. It provides a very nice introduction to Soil Surveys. The two questions it answers are: What is a Soil Survey? and What are Soil Surveys used for? It’s definitely worth reading. If you need a [...]
(Image from Veris Site) 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 [...]
I’ve seen some searches for an ATV Soil Sampler show up in the site results. I’ve set up a Picasa album with ATV Soil Sampler Pictures. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Garth Donald discusses the nutrients left in the soil in fall 2009. With the way the weather’s been, the nutrients left in the soil are quite variable. Some crops were not planted at all, some were drowned out early on, others were hailed out, and some produced near bumper crops. Trying to predict the nutrients [...]
Reading about Reducing Energy Inputs in the Agricultural Production System really encouraged me. I don’t know how trustworthy David Pimentel’s figures are, but even if they’re off by quite a bit, it shows that there are all kinds of possibilities for improvement in agriculture. At Tone Ag Consulting, we’ve been looking into various possibilities for [...]
Seth Godin recently had a post: What to do with special requests. We’ve had a lot of success with dealing with special requests. In some ways, dealing with special requests, particularly when it comes to rush soil sampling, is one of our niches. We can get out to a field and sample it the same [...]
I spent the day soil sampling. I did it the old fashioned way – working a dutch auger by hand and walking the field. It took a very long time. I only did it that way because our trucks and ATV were elsewhere and this field needed to be done in a hurry. Lots of [...]
With the latest revision to Manitoba’s manure regulations, manure application is restricted on fields with high soil test phosphorus. If a field regularly receives manure on a nitrogen basis, the soil test phosphorus levels will rise. N:P2O5 Ratios The biggest factor in rising soil test phosphorus is the N:P2O5 ratio of the manure versus the [...]
