Farmers Don't Build a New Shop on a Ten Cent Foundation; So why Grow a Crop on a Ten Cent Foundation?
The article "Soil Pits: Can You Dig It? Soil Pits Unveil Secrets About Soil Structure and Health" appeared on www.dtnpf.com on August 2, 2021. In this article, an agronomist for Orthman Manufacturing, who is a former NRCS soil scientist, discusses the many educational benefits of the soil pit. This agronomist claims the soil pit is a "gold mine" of information by giving the producer an idea of their soil resources and potential, but also shows the potential of the soil to absorb and store water and to release nutrients.
Since 1955, Growers Mineral, Corp. has used the soil pit to promote the use of the Growers Program. The company contends that by using Growers Mineral Solutions (GMS) and the correct amount of calcium (Ca) that the root environment of a plant will enlarge so as to benefit the growing crop. In years past, soil pits, such as the one shown in the month of August of the 2022 Growers calendar, have shown farmers the benefits listed by the Orthman Manufacturing agronomist in the www.dtnpf.com article. However, sometimes soil pits can occur quite by accident without any planning.
In the summer of 2021, GMS customers in the Red River Valley of Minnesota were required to cut a five foot deep trench through a growing corn field in order to install a main for a tile drainage system. For years these GMS customers had heard about the improvement in crop rooting environment when using the Growers Program. So the old adage "seeing is believing" definitely came into play in this case. As the farmers checked the depth of the trench to ensure the proper depth for the main tile, their eyes caught sight of the rooting depth of their corn crop shown in Photograph A. This particular field had received between 10 and 15 tons per acre of sugar beet lime from several applications while GMS was being used as a starter on the corn crops grown in this field. In fact, this soil pit was viewed by various farmers who were participating in a GMS field tour.
Photographs A and B are two photographs of the same plant root taken at different depths. The large root mass in photograph A is at the soil surface and very impressive for a depth of 14 to 16 inches; however, the large feeding root at the bottom of Photograph B was measured close to 48 to 50 inches in depth.
The GMS customers had used the GMS calculator in August to predict corn yields over 200 bushels per acre, which eventually proved to be correct. However, these customers were more impressed with their crop because of the total amount of rainfall they had received up to the viewing date. That total amount of rain received was about 3 inches by August 18.
Our company believes strong plant foundations help crops to deal with stress situations.
This is an excerpt from the Spring Growers Solution (2022) written by Jim Halbeisen, Director of Research.
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