Escaping the Futility of Nitrogen and Potassium Fertility with Dr. Richard Mulvaney & Dr. Saeed Kahn

December 7th 2021
Join the weekly Green Cover webinar as we listen to Dr. Richard Mulvaney and Dr. Saeed Kahn from the University of Illinois as they discuss "Escaping the Futility of Nitrogen and Potassium Fertility" If you are a producer and you apply either Nitrogen or Potassium to your fields, the research that will be shared during this webinar can save you thousands of dollars!

[@williamgibson2760]

Fantastic information. The Land Grant/Extension recommended levels of both N & K that come from the 50+ year old soil testing regimens are clearly FAR MORE than actually needed for any crop in any soil with even half decent soil aggregation & soil biology - and most soils that are very poorly aggregated will not be cured by adding more nitrates, ammonium or chloride. I'm headed to find these research papers & do some more re-tooling of my recommendations to my farmers & growers. Thank you, Green Cover Seed!

[@floridanaturalfarming3367]

The whole nutrient balancing schemes developed to grow our food is finally becoming elucidated as wrong in every way. Rather than adding more nitrogen on poor soils shouldn’t we fix the poor soil with better management? So N is in the soil, P is formed in the plant during photosynthesis during the Calvin Cycle and K is also 100 percent in the soil. Nutrient balancing should be holistic ecological balancing. Thank you, great presentation,

[@paulbraga4460]

the potassium bomb...wow. thank you, thank you, thank you... may we get the slides of the presentation? blessings to all

[@joseluizm.garcia998]

Congrats.. Well Done !! Cheers from Brazil.

[@greaterdesigns1]

I’m a corn and soybean grower in Iowa. Where I have low K levels I experience lodging in the crop. While I believe this teaching, and have NOT applied KCL to my land this year, there needs to be a part 2 to this video. That part 2 would be what proven (not theoretical) practices does a farmer need to adopt to feed K into the crop. Is it a potassium acetate over the top, is it a potassium sulfate with a humic, etc.

[@caroline61804]

Try foliage p sulfate on on small patch and acetate on another

[@nicolasbertin8552]

If you want all nutrients available for your crops, you basically need a diverse cover crop before your cash crop, that's the "easiest" solution. Christine Jones, on this channel, was talking about American, Aussie and Kiwi farmers who just do a diverse cover crop with at least 4 plant families, and then something like wheat, with 0 fertilizer. The cover crop has produced so much biomass, that you don't need anything, especially nitrogen. Potassium and phosphorous are famously brought to your plants by mycorrhizae, coz fungi and certain types of bacteria can just break down the bedrock or rocks in your soil and give those elements to your plants in exchange for sugars. However, you are right, I would like to see a variety of farmers in a video showing that it works on their land. I think the caveat is that you need a soil that's already in pretty good health : something like 4-5% organic matter. Which is why this method won't work right away for farmers in Europe, who have tilled their soils to death. Some farmers in Spain famously have only 0.5% organic matter left... In France, some vineyards are so eroded, they resort to big machinery that pulverize rocks, so they can build some soil again...

[@nicolasbertin8552]

The overfertilization isn't just in the crop fields. It's also in our private gardens. If you look at the big gardening youtube channels, it's staggering. They build raised beds in their gardens. They fill those beds with either pure compost, or potting mix. THEN they add blood, bones, fish meal, alfalfa meal and whatnot. Then they're like "I don't understand I have grubs in my raised beds, insects attacking my plants" etc... Well yeah, you basically filled your beds with fertilizer. Compost isn't soil. I'm following an Alaskan youtube channel where they just build rows with manure and spent barley, a little bit of topsoil (at least there's that...) and then add more fertilizers. And then "oh no I have aphids on my peppers I need to spray them". Well yeah, you got a huge nitrogen excess... So it's not just in commercial farmers, it's engrained into the minds of people. They think the more you put in, the more you get. Over N fertilizing gets you giant leaves, giant veggies. Problem is, the taste is bland, it's awful. Some plants also react badly to too much N, like cantaloupe (awful taste), onions (storage time plummets), basil (becomes a slug magnet and get destroyed). I found a way to go around that. Simply don't use fertilizers :D Sounds simple ? Well it is, and it works. Your garden only need plant diversity, and if you grow veggies, you just need mulch (wood chips for me) and some form of rich amendment for hungry crops (I use spent barley or compost). I also do varied cover crops (4 different plants at least). 0 fertilizer. And I have great harvests, no pests except pigeons on my cabbage (can't do anything about that...). But no aphids, no slugs, no potato beetle, no mildew.

[@tak3ma]

do you work in your cover crops at the end of their usefulness?

[@nicolasbertin8552]

@@tak3ma Never, it's so much easier to roll them over... When they're flowering, it kills them very efficiently.

[@tarquinbristow]

BRUTAL STUFF is correct :')

[@agroventuresperu5469]

Most of Khan's claims about having an endless supply of Potassium in the soil seem to be based primarily on the context of Mollisols in the midwestern USA. Has he looked into sandy soils with subsoil aluminum saturation toxicity in the equatorial humid tropics? I wonder if his statments apply to extremely leached soils in tropical areas. Is it possible to have soil profiles and parent materials that are absent K or do not contain sufficient quantities of K? Is ICP-OES an accurate method for testing total (elemental) K content of a soil sample? I tested a B horizon soil sample with this method and it showed 90mg/kg K, which sounds extremely low to me considering that method is supposed to take into account any and all forms of K present: exchangeable, fixed, mineral. At least that is my understanding of ICP-OES. Clay content of that sample was 30% Perhaps there is a limitation of ICP-OES when it comes to testing K?

[@caroline61804]

does potassium sulfate hurt soil or does that increase yield

[@marlan5470]

How's the price of fertilizer now?

[@caroline61804]

46:17. potassium or is it chloride supresses nitrogen because same charge. chloride suppress nitrogen uptake

[@liammulligan1279]

So let me get this straight. Put phosphorus and nitrogen into the soil but not potassium?

[@nicolasbertin8552]

The ultimate goal is to put nothing. With the right varieties, healthy soils, and high biomass varied cover crops, you can do without any fertilizer. However, if your soil only has 1-2 % organic matter, like a lot of massacred soils in Europe, by decades of tillage, then it's a different story... Regardless, for me the biggest discovery is that if you put ammonium or nitrates, plants don't form a rhizosphere, and can't exchange nutrients and water through mycorrhizae. Which means the more fertilizer you use, the less you can escape using it... It's a trap.

[@oscar6832]

​@@nicolasbertin8552I read studies that tilled soils had more organic matter in the soil than no till soils. When organic matter decomposes, it basically becomes CO2, that's the final stage. But if you do a 4 inch soil test, no till wins off course, because it's laying on the surface, but it disappears as carbon dioxide faster than if you mix it in the soil. In the 80s no till was very popular. It didnt raise organic matter. The #1 thing to do that raises organic matter in the soil is *cover* *crops*

[@nicolasbertin8552]

@@oscar6832 wow you're mixing up everything. First, no organic matter doesn't evaporate into CO2, only a part of it. About 50% for compost piles, about 20-30% for mulch. Second, no mulch doesn't stay there... Worms mix it into the soil. Mulch is faster at increasing organic matter content because you can bring a lot of it. The best cover crop in the world, with like 10 different families of plants, a meter of rain a year, will give you a bump of 0.5%. Usually it's more like 0.1 % the way people use only one or two plants. 5 cm of wood chips per year on your soil will give you 1% of a bump, without even trying. Or you till the wood chips in, in the case of a very compacted soil, you may gain 2. And finally, tilled fields are the worst. Tillage brings too much oxygen, degrading the stable organic matter. Then a soil left bare will oxydize even more with UVs, rain and wind. The entire issue with modern agriculture isn't pesticides or chemical fertilizers, it's tillage and bare soil. They destroy soils so much, plants have nothing to feed on, become weak, and need constant expensive care with chemicals. You have the problem all backwards, never seen anything like it tbh.

[@axelcst5998]

A strange comment at the beginning. Did not need to know his citizenship, bit bigoted. But the content was very valuable.

[@growthefarmup2606]

Go whine about your wokeism somewhere else, all guests on green cover seeds give their background and experience. Then they simply joked around about whether being a American citizen is a good thing or bad thing! For a out 10 seconds. Totally relevant humor! Just stop with the bigoted take on his introduction. This is a soil fertility clinic & study vid, not a woke protest. Some of us read the comments for others info... not SJW cringe. 🤔

[@sharonsteele618]

Not bigotry, maybe the man is very proud to have worked so hard to become a naturalized citizen. I don't see it as something to be ashamed of. I thought it was very cool myself. He has worked in different continents, different climates, with different rain amounts and working with farmer rich and poor. Just this exposure makes him more qualified than the most. Maybe you should check your motives.

[@axelcst5998]

@@growthefarmup2606 Snowflakes seems a bit tired, you should take a nap.,

[@growthefarmup2606]

@@axelcst5998 so.... you enjoy your nap! 😆

[@axelcst5998]

@@growthefarmup2606 Snowflakes must be having a very very bad day, If you are very good and take a nap, you can pick one toy, remember only one toy.