So there was lots of other stuff going on last week that I wish to share. Here is a cool picture of the new office when I got to work last Tuesday at 6 am. OK, it was probably a little...or a lot later than that, but it still looked cool all lit up ready for another day of important fertilizering.
You will recall all of those pictures of big hairy wheat roots that I showed recently from my trip to Oklahoma. "Well are there root differences here at the NCRS" I asked myself. Well I wanted to find out and visited this wheat experiment on Farm 7 last Tuesday afternoon. It was cloudy and cold, like usual in Michigan this time of year. I couldn't find anyone willing to do the shovel duty, so I had to do it myself. (I remember how they worked after all.) But no pics of that. Here is how the field looked being planted a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately it has also been serving as a deer smorgasbord.
So for several years we did some experiments on methods of application and found that broadcast applications of fall fertilizer were as effective as drill-applied fertilizer. That was the case again this year. This defies logic, but has proven true in Michigan. Although it may not elsewhere. But the narrow drilled rows can use the broadcast fertilizer. Anyway, here is an experiment of different broadcast liquid treatments, applied after planting. And what do you know, there were differences. The picture shows 10 seedling wheat plants from the border rows. This will be a good test with 265 foot long plots with 4 replications. Anyway, the Pro-Germinator and Pro-Germinator + High NRG-N applications seem to have enabled a bigger root system than did a higher rate 10-34-0. So with that documented, we will have to wait till next July or August to see how the story ends. But I like the start anyway.
And that's not all...not by a long shot. Troy has been making the rounds in America. Last Monday he was an in-studio guest of Ag PhD Radio (heard daily on Rural Radio Channel 80 on SiriusXM.) He talked about fertilizer and the IQ Hub with Darren Hefty and Rob Fritz. Hope you heard it. Then on Thursday (Halloween) he was at the National FFA Convention in Louisville, KY. He is on the FFA board of directors for Michigan. While there he was interviewed by Mr. Agriculture himself, Orion Samuelson. This was a life-long dream I'm sure. For Troy anyway, not sure about Orion. Anyway, that was shown live on the RFD Channel which was featuring the convention, and he talked about fertilizer and the IQ Hub. (That guy in the middle works for the FFA and is a former national officer.) So that was cool to see. He made us all proud.
Fortunately, we can get RFD TV at the office and several of us stayed to watch our leader. Troy is passionate about FFA being the future of agriculture, and looks forward to the opening of the IQ Hub and having chapter and state events here.
See, I told you it was an interesting week. I was glad to be in town all week. But that will end as embark on a far away fertilizer mission this coming week. I'm sure there are several blogs waiting to be hatched.
