It’s time to start thinking about next season’s soil health. The Mosaic Company’s Crop Nutrition Lead, Taylor Purucker said the right management practices now will make sure your soil health is top-notch in 2022. Plan ahead to order fertilizers as part of an advanced crop nutrition strategy to build soil health in your fields. He talks about what growers need to do this fall to prepare for next year.

“This a really good time to think about taking soil samples and evaluating crop nutrition needs or the upcoming growing season in 2022. If there's anything that the Ag supply chain has taught us, recently, is that it's really important to plan out our management systems, in some instances, well in advance of when we're going to incorporate some of those practices. It's also a great time to take some of that yield data and combine it with the soil test values so we can hone in fertilizer recommendations. Taking this information gives us a good idea on exactly how much nutrients are in the soil, and what the difference is that we need to supplement with fertilizers.”

Purucker said fall fertilizers can give farmers a lot of flexibility in that there’s time to apply the fertilizer, incorporate it, and hit the ground running that much quicker in the spring. Fall is a great time to apply fertilizer, but there is a delicate balance to timing.

“We have to consider the four R's of nutrient management, which is applying the right source of fertilizer, at the right time, at the right rate, in the right place. Even with fall fertilizer applications, we can apply fertilizer that matches and synchronizes nutrient availability with crop uptake. We want to consider which nutrients aren't mobile in the soil and available right away versus those that are immobile and take time to get to a plant-available form. A great example would be sulfur; a mobile available form of sulfate, and by using the fall fertilizer application just because there's going to be a lot of time before the crop is planted and before the crop is going to take that nutrient up, maybe a better strategy would be apply an immobile or plant-unavailable form such as elemental sulfur that takes time to oxidize and better matches when the crop is going to exactly take those nutrients up.”

It’s important to know what nutrients are depleted from the soil, which is where soil testing comes in. As farmers make plans for next year, advanced crop nutrition should be an annual conversation with their advisors.

“It's really key to start conversations with your crop advisor and retailer as early as possible. This will set a grower up in the best position to create productive systems in 2022. This should be an annual conversation that you have with your crop advisor. I know that we talk about taking soil samples every two-to-three years for every field, but as we think about creating healthier soils, more sustainable, more efficient systems, I think it'll be more and more important to have those conversations annually so that we get the most efficient use out of the crop nutrition programs.”

Purucker talks about what farmers can do to improve their soil health and make their operations more sustainable while caring for the environment.

“There have been two phosphate-based fertilizers that are designated with the enhanced efficiency fertilizer label, those being Micro Essentials and Susterra fertilizer from Mosaic, which will help increase nutrient availability while protecting nutrients from being lost in the environment. So, it's just another good tool that we have to create more sustainable systems.

For more information, visit Mosaic Company’s.

If you have a story idea for the PNW Ag Network, call (509) 547-1618, or e-mail gvaagen@cherrycreekmedia.com

More From PNW Ag Network