|
Ample information to answer your question is available on the www. The soil sample is the first step. It tells you what is stored in the soil. With high fertilizer prices, you can"t afford to guess anymore. Then you determine what you want to plant. Plant consumption requirements are also available here (www).....sometimes by garden spots, or local ag and mech universities or fertilizer companies, or maybe a magazine or book. I use Eldorado chemical co. who I seem to recall is a sub of Cargill enterprises; a big outfit in the ag business. They supply a very informative brochure providing information as to what part each primary ingredient and trace ingredients play in the development of the plant. As a matter of fact, they did my soil tests this year free of charge. Can"t beat a deal like that. Growth is controlled by moisture, sunlight, and nutrients available and in a consumable state (for the plant)..... limit any one of them and you will stop the crop production at the point that they run out. As they are depleted, the contents of your crop will suffer. Like the protein of your hay will test low or something like that requiring you to provide supplements (bag feed) to livestock to bring the protein content up to acceptable levels. Or, rather than getting 5 tons of forage per acre, you only get 2 and the quality will probably be low. If you don"t return elements to the soil you will "mine" the elements from your soil and after a time you won"t be able to grow anything. How do I know all this? I have been studying it for the past several years, especially the past 6 months in preparation for this year"s hay crop which will require some of that high priced fertilizer you mentioned. On the plus side, the rule of thumb around here used to be 6:1. You get 6 times the crop improvement for 1 investment ($) in fertilizer. With the current situation that number probably will be more like 2-3:1. Additionally, since the harvesting equipment has to go over the field anyway, regardless of yield, it makes economic sense to have the better crop with the better yield per acre. HTH Mark
| 
