Planting in Cold Soil
When Growers Mineral, Corp. started business in 1955, one of the uses of GMS promoted was to apply GMS with In-Furrow (on the seed) technology to corn. As the company grew and aged, GMS was used as a starter on other crops. As with corn, other crops benefited from the addition of GMS when the plant was placed in cold soil. Over the years, conventional wisdom of the agricultural establishment gave the credit for increased plant performance to the plant's utilization of the elements that were present in GMS. In the early days of the company, that explanation seemed to explain why producers were continually repurchasing GMS. However, over the years, the company's observations of their customers' successes seemed to suggest that the complexity of the soil was helping the crop with more than just the added elemental plant food. So, in today's world of soil health, the Growers Research and Education Team tried to establish if the GMS could be improving the function of the soil's microbiological life.
The first step in this project was to use the microBIOMETER to measure the biomass volume in a soil at a certain temperature as it related to various treatments. According to the agricultural establishment, beneficial soil microbes do not start functioning in soil until about 60°F, so the experiment used a soil temperature of 57°F (because of convenience) to see if GMS could help the beneficial soil microbiological population get started at a lower temperature. If this proved to be true, GMS could be quite helpful in early planting situations or minimal tillage situations, or both.
So, a soil with a biomass volume of 216 according to the microBIOMETER (the higher the number from the microBIOMETER means a higher volume of microbiological biomass) with a lab temperature of 60 to 65°F was mixed with treatments of RO water, 500 to 1 9-18-9 fertilizer, 500 to 1 10-20-10 with no trace minerals, and 500 to 1 GMS. The soil was then cooled to 57° for 72 hours. The soil biomass volume was measured at 24 hours from the start, and 72 hours from the start. The results of these measurements are presented in Table 1.
The results in Table 1 seemed to suggest that GMS helped increase the volume of microbiological life at a lower temperature than what is proposed by the agricultural establishment for functioning of microbes in soil. Our results seem to coincide with the results many GMS customers see when using GMS as a starter in the spring of the year.
Table 1 includes data concerning the percentages of bacteria and fungi microbiological life which is found by the microBIOMETER test. The manufacturers of the microBIOMETER, Prolific Earth Science, believe these percentages have a definite impact on soil health. We aren't sure at this time what those numbers have to say about soil health. We will continue to monitor those numbers and let our GMS customers tell us how those percentages influence crop production.
This is an excerpt from the Spring Growers Solution (2023) written by Jim Halbeisen, Director of Research.
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