Challenging spring weather
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Paul McDivitt:
Welcome back to University of Minnesota Extension's Nutrient Management Podcast. I'm your host, Paul McDivitt, Communications Specialist here at U of M Extension. Today on the podcast, we're talking about challenging spring weather and how growers can move forward. We have four members of Extension's Nutrient Management team. Can you each give us a quick introduction?
Brad Carlson:
Brad Carlson. I'm an Extension Educator, I work out of the regional office in Mankato.
Anne Nelson:
Anne Nelson. I'm a Regional Educator and I work out of the St. Cloud regional office.
Lindsay Pease:
Hi, my name is Dr. Lindsay Pease. I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, and I'm stationed at the Northwest Research and Outreach Center in Crookston.
Jeff Strock:
And this is Jeff Strock down at the Southwest Research and Outreach Center near Lamberton. Also, a soil scientist, and looking forward to talking about a really relevant topic, Paul.
Paul McDivitt:
Great. Yeah. So we've got a good overview of the state here from you four. Can you each give us a quick update on what field conditions are looking like in your part of the state?
Brad Carlson:
Well, I can start, South Central Minnesota actually was a part of the state that was still considered to be in somewhat moderate drought up until a couple of weeks ago, but now we've been getting quite a bit of precipitation over the last two weeks. I'm not quite sure that we're quite to field capacity yet, but we're getting close. I think when the next time I see that drought monitor, that's probably going to have been removed for this part of the state.
Brad Carlson:
As with everybody, the cold soil temperatures, the cold weather, has also been a factor. In addition to that, the precept that we have got and the so much we have got just doesn't dry out, it's staying cloudy despite the fact that it's been very windy. And so from that standpoint, very little field work has been done this spring in South Central Minnesota.
Brad Carlson:
I was talking to somebody over the weekend who reported some corn being planted kind of down by the Iowa border, but it came with the caveat that this person, if he was accurate, suggested the person doing the planting had about 10,000 acres to plant and they just simply weren't going to wait anymore. That no one else who had the luxury of time was out in the field, but very little field activity has happened in the South Central area. I'm not hardly even seeing anybody out picking rocks or even taking soil samples right now.
Jeff Strock:
You know, that's really interesting, Brad, a little bit of contrast here in the Southwest, certainly West of you, where we've actually stayed in that sort of dry zone. A lot of the precipitation that's been heading our way has kind of almost sort of parted like the red sea around Southwestern Minnesota and gone East of us, gone North of us, gone West of us. And so we actually have fairly decent soil conditions in terms of moisture, at least for planting. Ideally we'd have a bit more moisture coming after the seed gets in the ground because our profile is, it's still rather dry.
Jeff Strock:
We've been out doing a little tiling around here and digging around, looking for those tile. We have not really had any significant wet-sticky conditions out there. The biggest problem, like you've sort of articulated Brad that we have around here is soil temperatures. You know, I looked at our data. We've only been above 55 degrees twice in the last month and a half. Otherwise, most of our soil temps are down in the thirties and forties, which is clearly not conducive, but we're getting to that time of year where, it's got to be go time, right?
Jeff Strock:
The farmers are going to need to get out there and start getting seed in the ground because, eventually it will warm up, right? And the longer we wait, the more likely as we have to wait longer and longer, especially with potential rain in the forecast coming up, that, we're going to start losing yield potential. So I've only seen a couple of fields planted around here, but yesterday and today, before the rains, our forecast to come, we've seen a lot of fertilizer out there and a lot of secondary cultivation happening to get that worked in. Usually it's been NPK in Urea right now.
Lindsay Pease:
Jeff, 55 degree soil moisture seems like a dream, especially in Northwest Minnesota. I don't even think we've hit that a single day yet, which I mean is more expected for way up North where I'm at. But I think I'll also talk about that is some of what made that flooding that we had Crookston and the Red River Valley so much worse this past weekend. So just to recap on Saturday, April 23rd, we had two inches of rain that fell here in Crookston on top of melting snow and hail. And I actually had a couple reports of people who thought their houses got hit by a tornado. So, we had really severe weather on Saturday, April 23rd. And all of that happened on ground that was still frozen at about six inch depth. So that's why we saw such massive, massive flooding over the weekend.
Lindsay Pease:
And actually, so we had the worst flood crest in Crookston since the 97' flood. It was the third highest crest at the Red Lake River in Crookston since 97'. Well, actually the third one overall, the other one was like 1969 or something. So, I mean really put all the flood reduction structures to the test. I know that some people's homes did get flooded. Most of the city were pretty fortunate though, but also, my sump pump has been working overtime at my own house since then. So fingers crossed that it holds out until we dry out, but I was really, really surprised driving around just even yesterday.
Lindsay Pease:
So we're recording this on a Thursday morning. And so by the Wednesday after that Saturday, a lot of the waters gone off the fields. And I do think the water probably helped melt some of that ice that was left. If you think about an ice cube in a glass, whether or not you add water or not to it, it's going to melt faster in water than if it's just sitting in the cup by itself, basic, simple science experiment. You could do it home, but also applies to our soils. So I think it did help us maybe thaw out those last, I mean, it's still not warm.
Lindsay Pease:
Soils are still low forties as of this morning, but we're getting there. But yeah, I think it's just really hard for a lot of guys to be thinking about we might be... when we might be able to get out in the field, it's just so hard to say at this point.
Anne Nelson:
Yeah. That's so crazy Lindsay, all the issues you're having up there. I think in Central Minnesota, we have these two kind of drastic soil textures, right? So we have some heavy pockets, right? And then you drive two miles down the road and it's almost pure beach sand. And so I'm really seeing this great mix of what field conditions are like here near St. Cloud. And so I've seen some traditionally vegetable fields that have had a lot of field work done even two weeks ago. And so, but then we have these other big pockets where there's sanding water. Like it's pretty risky to even go out there. And so I think in these sandy soils, really the only thing holding us back right now is those cold soil temperatures. But what is worked up looks very beautiful, nice and fluffy for a sand. And so, if we could just get some warm weather, I think we'd be good to go in those sandy soils. And it might take a few more weeks with those heavier soils.
Lindsay Pease:
Yeah. And we have a little bit of dichotomy in the valley too, as you get further East, we have sandier soils and they've fared a little bit better on infiltration, but still, so yeah. So we see a little bit of that too, Anne, but not quite as much as you do.
Paul McDivitt:
So after a cold wet April with not much field work, what should growers be thinking about heading into May?
Brad Carlson:
Well, I think a lot of it depends on how much work got done last fall. Of course, the elephant in the room for a lot of people is nitrogen application in terms of getting it done, the desire to have it applied prior to planting, but then also because of that umbrella issue of the price and a little bit of this combination of having booked the nitrogen, because there was no other way to ensure it was going to be available. You know, so now it's bought, and maybe you're kind of stuck with how you're going to apply it or what you bought? If you bought anhydrous intending to do a spring application, that might be a little bit tricky, but then there's some other ripples in here also because while we're talking nutrient management, there's been a lot of issues relative to herbicide availability, particularly I know like glyphosate and glufosinate have had problems.
Brad Carlson:
And so there was a lot of switch to pre-plant, pre-emerge herbicides. A lot of that ends up getting applied with a nitrogen source. And so if that was part of the plan there was to apply a pre herbicide and put some 28% with that, then that also an issue also. So I think producers obviously all know their own situation. And so it really, it kind of comes down to looking at specifically what you need to do and prioritizing it. It's in a very simple manner, in a lot of cases, our crops are going to be forgiving. Our corn crop is going to be forgiving of doing the application after the crop gets planted with some exceptions. We know that in high residue situations, we tend to see a benefit of at least getting some starter fertilizer on there.
Brad Carlson:
And it also poses a little bit of a risk if you're doing, for instance, a top dress urea application, and it's landing on a lot of residue, you could temporarily mobilize that nitrogen and cause some deficiency symptoms. But beyond that, if you're just in a simple corn-soybean rotation, a lot of cases I would prioritize getting planted the later it gets, we have the ability, the infrastructure to get a lot of nitrogen applied as top grass with rows straddling equipment in a hurry, but you'll need to be having conversations with your dealers about that. And, of course, again, if you've got corn-on-corn situations, that needs to be a priority to get at least some of your nitrogen applied before planting time.
Jeff Strock:
Brad, you talk about some of that need to really consider how, and when we're going to get that nitrogen down, a couple of thoughts and observations I've had from down here in the Southwest, it really seemed like coming out of the drought conditions that we had last summer and kind of going into fall that remarkably around here ordinarily the farmers will do some tillage on the corn and the corn stalk that are out there and maybe run some anhydrous through in their bean ground. So there's not a lot of disturbance out there. In quite a few of my travels though, this last fallen into the spring, there were a lot of people who really did not do much tillage in the fall at all. Maybe some of it was because it was a little bit it on the wetter side, we did have a little bit of moisture down here that was made things a bit sticky in the early part of the fall.
Jeff Strock:
But one of the other thoughts that I've had is my predecessor, Wally Nelson, I remember having conversations with him about some of the previous droughts that we've had and say 76'. And in the 87', 88', 89' period, where they were recommending the farmers to try to minimize some of that tillage and leave some of the residue out there that might help trap some snow and allow some additional infiltration into the ground in the spring. So I'm not sure why we saw less tillage around here, but it really does look like to me, that farmers are going to need to be getting some of that fertilizer on this spring, especially nitrogen in quite a few of the fields around here. So there will be a lot of spring applications if the fields conditions are suitable. Now, one of the things too, that just struck me, that you were talking about, and that is that across the state, we've got these prob projects, these long term nitrogen projects that Fabian Fernandez has been kind of shepherding along for the past few years.
Jeff Strock:
And he sent out a note here a couple of weeks ago. And one of the things that we've done now is we've gone out and in that long term nitrogen study, we've taken soil samples now to measure residual nitrate in the spring. And so I know here at Lamberton, we just got those taken yesterday. So we'll be sending them into the lab to get those extracted and get the results back quick so that we can really see what do we have residual from last year? Given the drought conditions, we had pretty decent yields, but I'm guessing that there probably still is a bit of residual end left.
Jeff Strock:
So thinking about the conditions this spring too, if we do have some residual and especially in those corn-on-corn situations, that could actually help the farmers if they have a little bit of a delay, if they get some starter or something on early with the seed that there might be some nitrogen in that second or third foot down there yet from the drought last fall that didn't get used that maybe will be available. If we've got some delays in getting some additional an on this spring.
Brad Carlson:
That's a good point, Jeff. And that's actually something we've been stressing this winter is talking about the potential for carry over nitrogen because of the drought to something we see historically, the technique that we recommend is taking a two foot soil sample to analyze for residual nitrates, and then crediting that towards next year's nitrogen application. We've talked about this in previous podcasts, through other areas, blogs and so forth. That data shared with us from Minnesota valley testing labs showed that 70% of the samples that they had submitted to them this last fall for analysis showed a nitrogen credit.
Brad Carlson:
And so there is a great ability to do that. The problem is though is we look at best practices or recommended practices with taking that soil nitrate test. Of course, it's going to require being able to get out and take the soil samples, get them analyzed, get the results back, and then be able to have time to make a correction with your nitrogen application, which of course is time is becoming shorter and shorter, the ability or the patience of the individual to do that is going to be kind of stretch.
Brad Carlson:
The point though, that I would also like to stress is if you applied some of your fertilizer in the fall, or if you're thinking about going in and applying, maybe say a half rate, remember that test is not calibrated for having a previous fertilizer application. And so it's going to be very difficult to assess what you're picking up in that soil sample that's attributable to residual or carry over nitrogen. What is attributable to the amount of nitrogen you already applied? I'd be very careful about that if you're looking at taking that soil test and you're looking also at getting in the field, maybe before you're able to get the results back, make sure you leave at least a small area unfertilized so that when you take a cell sample, it's going to give you an accurate representation of what's there for residual nitrate. But I don't know, we've been stressing farmers to try and take credit for that nitrogen. I'm just worried that the way this spring is playing out, it's not really allowing for that to happen very well.
Lindsay Pease:
Yeah. And in the vein of planning and trying to get out in the fields, would soil sampling even if you can do it by hand, and if you don't have to drive a truck out in the field, you theoretically could get out there with your mud boots and take a soil sample. If you know, you're ready, waiting, anxious to get out in the field, but can't quite drive any equipment out there. So that could be a good option for some of you.
Paul McDivitt:
So after two drier than normal years, this spring has looked a lot more like the wet springs we've been getting more of the last couple decades. How can growers better manage nutrients and water as Minnesota's climate gets increasingly wetter?
Anne Nelson:
Oh, I'll jump in here. I want to talk specifically about the sandy soils, for years we've stressed the need for at least one split application, right? But I think in the last few years in our research, we've started to see that maybe you could really get some benefit from a three or a four split throughout the season. And, in our last question, we talked about, if you can't get in with that nitrogen application right away before planting, going after planting it might be a better option in for corn and sandy soils, we see that you can wait until V2 consistently, not even in a wet year and your yields turn out fine. If you get in at least maybe 20 pounds on by V2, you should be okay. And then everything after that. And so really with these sandy soils doing the split applications, it's honestly going to be your best bet to keep that nitrogen around where you want it.
Anne Nelson:
And if you can't do that, maybe this is the time where you look at a coated urea product, right? So maybe going out in the field four times just is not a great option for you, gas costs a lot of money these days. And so that might be an option to look into. So that's what I would suggest.
Jeff Strock:
Yeah. Your comment and question there, Paul is really pretty interesting to think about. And as one of the two soil scientists, the kind of hardcore soil physics people like Lindsay and I on the podcast today, I might dig into the weeds a little bit here and maybe think about, and talk a little bit about your observation related to dry and wet conditions. I had a recent conversation with Dennis Todey, who's the director of the Midwest Climate Hub down in Ames. And we were chit chatting about a number of things. And he was really excited. He said, Jeff, he said, I just recently updated the last 30 year normals. And I saw this really, really interesting data signal in my data.
Jeff Strock:
And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I said, let me guess, did you see a bimodal distribution? And for those of you out there in the world that don't understand what a bimodal distribution is, it's kind of like we see camels with one hump and we see camels with two humps. All right. So the bimodal one is the camel with two hums. All right. So one of the signals that Dennis has seen and we've seen here in Southwestern Minnesota for the last 10 to 15 years in our precipitation record is this bimodal distribution or two humps that is starting to occur. And what's really interesting about it is that where we used to see our peaks of precipitation in June and July, we still see it there, but the magnitude of that peak, if you look at it on average is slightly lower than what it used to be.
Jeff Strock:
And, then we get this period of drier conditions than we've had in the past, during the middle part of the summer, July and August. And then all of a sudden, the end of August, September, October, it starts to go back up and we start getting moisture and any farmer that's out there, who's been out there trying to harvest beans and corn in September and October the last five years is knowing exactly what I'm talking about, where it's dry, dry, dry, dry, and we're thinking, oh, we're going to get into the field and get harvesting early. And then all of a sudden it gets wet. The ground gets wet and it delays things a little bit. So I think when we think about nutrient management, we've really got to kind of put that sort of a distribution of rainfall in perspective, right?
Jeff Strock:
Because it really does kind of characterize for some of the areas of the state that we're talking about this year. What we're really seeing, that we're seeing this rather wet spring in certain areas. And, it's created some challenges for farmers to get some of that fertilizer down. And of course the cold temperatures haven't helped to get the seed in the ground. But, I think, when you think about what Anne was just talking about, that we might need to be thinking a little bit more about split applications as a tool that might actually be able to be fairly handy because not only will it allow farmers to be able to kind of control what they're doing and when they're doing it, if conditions are adequate.
Jeff Strock:
If we do start getting some of these drier conditions, then maybe they can think about the fact of, well, maybe if it's going to end up being dry and the longer range forecast is dry, maybe I can cut back a little bit on what I need to put on, because if the crop's not going to be using it, then it's just money out of your pocket instead of in your pockets. So it's going to be interesting. And it's exciting. It's really exciting to think about how we're going to have to think about management and work with the growers to make sure that we're meeting the needs of the crop and the producers for achieving high yields, but also trying to think about that profitability aspect. And, certainly we can't forget about some of the environmental quality things that'll go along with some of that too.
Brad Carlson:
That's interesting, Jeff, it really gets back to what we've been stressing when we teach our nitrogen smart program. And I think a lot of producers will identify with the thought that average just isn't really good enough. And because there's never really average, it's just lumping everything all together. One of the things, the concepts that I know Dan Kaiser has brought to us regarding, for instance, potassium and phosphorus applications is instead of looking at average yield increase and so forth is probability of yield increase. And in reality, if we start thinking about really a lot of our decisions and nitrogen management is a prime example of this, instead of saying, on average, we need this, instead we say, when the conditions are like this, we need to do X. And when the conditions are like this, we need to do Y and we need to stop thinking about that.
Brad Carlson:
We just kind of do in general, the same thing every year, that the conditions that cause the need for adjustment are knowable. And so if you understand better how the soil moisture and how the climate conditions, the temperature, some of those things affect those, you can actually be adapting and adjusting your management from one year to the next. I realize that our fertilizer suppliers get a little bit of heartburn with that because it makes it very difficult to plan their activities, but from a farmer level, that's maybe something we need to be stressing a little bit more is really looking at conditions and then changing our management based on that.
Jeff Strock:
Brad, that's really, really awesome. And the thing that popped into my head when you were talking and Lindsay and I have been part of this initiative over the last few months is the... and it's new, but it's not new. And that's the EROC effort. And, looking at some of the weather stations that they've been putting around the state, all of our ROCs have had weather data that we share with our growers on our websites. But now we've got this coordinated effort where we're trying to get it sort of in a platform, it's maybe a little bit more uniform, but what I was going to drive with this is the fact that, as we're moving forward in time, and we have these resources of technology, as farmers maybe, farming in areas further away from home, in some cases, I know farmers around here that are farming 20, 30 miles away, and the conditions may be different there.
Jeff Strock:
The beauty of having some of these networks of precipitation, soil moisture measurements, and things like that, provide some technology that the farmers should be able to have at their fingertips, right on their phones or through their computers to say, okay, what does it look like here? Is this going to be fit? And, I think it also is useful when we think about the ideas of being able to look at what are the current soil temperatures? What's the forecast looking like? To help some of those management decisions, not only just for planting, but also maybe for some of those fertilizer applications and one of the things that I've, as sort of a soil physics guy, I get indigestion, I get heartburn when I know that maybe conditions are not so suitable, but we need to get planting. And, so people maybe tend to compact things a little bit. So we've got to also kind of keep that in mind because that compaction can hang around for a long time.
Lindsay Pease:
Yeah. And I think there's been a lot of work that us as the UMN Nutrient Management Team have done that shows, we know that the precipitation and the soil moisture are affecting our soil fertility and our nitrogen rates. And I definitely think we're at a point where we just need to start looking well, what do we actually do about it? And some of that challenge is, well, we don't have any better prediction of what's going to happen from day to day or week to week than anybody else does. But I still think that is a really critically important next area for us as researchers to really dig into so that we can help provide some of that more tailored to the season information.
Brad Carlson:
Well, like one area that I had a detailed conversation with a grower earlier this week, who was talking about doing urea application early in the morning when the ground is frozen, that is too wet to get out there. And so he was curious about what my thoughts of that were, and that's a very complicated situation in general. I don't really like the practice. It is quite risky, but under the circumstance it's possible. It could be okay. I think a lot of it really relates to what the capacity is in the soil to absorb more moisture. Okay. So if the problem is that when it's thought out later in the day, you can't drive out there, then just exactly how wet is it because what you really want is, so if you're applying that urea early in the morning, then when it thaws out, you want that to be getting into the ground.
Brad Carlson:
You don't want it to be just simply dissolving and then being a thin layer on the surface, which makes it very susceptible to loss through the urease process. And so, in particular, that's something to be thinking about if there's capacity and there's rain in the forecast, then it's probably all right. But of course you need to be very careful if you're applying that on frozen ground and it stays cold, and then it rains, you could dissolve all that urea and just run the whole works right off the field. And so that could be a very, very bad in many respects, bad for... You'll need to come back and apply a full rate. Nitrogen's very expensive, but then also bad for the environment too, to be losing that amount of nitrogen just simply dissolving and running off the field. And so really it's going to be very challenging. Moving forward farmers are going to really have to stay on top of what their field conditions are like.
Paul McDivitt:
All right. Any last words from the group?
Brad Carlson:
Well, I think I just want to stress what I said earlier, and that is, I think farmers need to looking systematically at what all types of work they need to get done, prioritizing that when time is short and in particular, while you may have a preferred order that the field operations happen in, as I've said before, in a lot of cases, nitrogen application can be forgiving as far as when you get that on provided there's enough to get the crop started. And the demands of a corn plant are actually quite small when the plant is quite small. And so really, if you just look at the circumstances where you're more likely to run into problems, corn-on-corn, high residue, and so forth and prioritize those, but then after that probably prioritize getting out and planting and looking at applying the bulk of your nitrogen fertilizer, maybe after you got the crop planted.
Paul McDivitt:
All right. That about does it for this episode at the Nutrient Management Podcast, we'd like to thank the Agricultural Fertilizer Research and Education Council, AFREC for supporting this podcast. Thanks for listening.
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