Treasure Valley Visit

So last week I had the opportunity to travel out to the Treasure Valley.  Where's that you ask?  OK, I didn't know it either till I got there. But it's the area to the West of Boise, ID. Boise is in the Western side of the state and several rivers converge on the area to form the Snake River, and formed a flat valley.  The ground there is very rich and fertile, as long as you have water.  The crop diversity there is pretty amazing.  It is one of the country's leading suppliers of yellow onions.  Onions are mostly fertilized by (gasp) dry fertilizer applied in the fall, but with 32% UAN applied through drip tape.  

This grower wisely applied Pro-Germinator + Kalibrate + Micro 500 + High NRG-N through the drip tape during the growing season.  Makes sense, and they look great.  They have been lifted out of the ground and are now awaiting harvest.

AgroLiquid's Retail Partner out here is Gary Schwieger of Soil Logic.  Gary is pretty new to retail partnering but has some AgroLiquid out in a number of fields on a number of crops.  That's Gary and Sales Account Manager Bruce Keck admiring some of the onions in the field here.  There were onions being harvested all over and trucks loaded with onions headed all over the country.

There are a number of crops grown for seed.  Seed that is, for planting to grow more crops elsewhere.  I would have never have figured out what this crop is.  So I'll spare you and say that it's endive.  It is a leafy vegetable, although I'm not sure I have ever had any.  It looks like Chicory.  And this will be a very good crop of endive seed since it was fertilized with AgroLiquid.

 We went over to a University of Idaho research farm and saw these apple trees.  Look at how they are grown, I guess to make it easier to harvest.  And these were sprayed with a clay coating to protect them from the sun I guess.  And it was hot in the 90's last week, which is much above average.  They looked ripe to me.

 Idaho is widely known as the potato state, and here is one very large field of potatoes that is ready to harvest.  I didn't see a lot of potatoes here in the Treasure Valley, as most are grown over in Eastern Idaho.

 Here is another seed crop, this time carrot seed.  This guy had a big semi-trailer full of carrot seed from just 15 acres.  It is a pretty valuable trailer right there.

 Quite a few sugarbeets are grown in the Treasure Valley.  As with many crops, dry fertilizer is applied in the fall, worked in, and then the beds are formed and then wait for spring planting.  They don't get much snow here, so fertilizer loss isn't a real concern.  They form beds as they rely on furrow irrigation.  And all they want to do in the spring is plant.  Well we are going to try some AgroLiquid apps here to see what works best.  I'm excited.

 Another crop where AgroLiquid is in use is on these Riesling wine grapes.

They said they are about three to four weeks from harvest.  The fertilizer was applied through the drip irrigation system you can see about a foot off the ground.  And also through some foliar applications.

They look good to me.  There are grapes everywhere.

 Now here's a crop I certainly recognize.  This corn was fertilized with a planter application of Pro-Germinator + Micro 500 and sidedressed with High NRG-N.  Makes sense.

 This had a different planter fertilizer, and had urea broadcast for nitrogen.  Well looks a little short to me, but we'll see.  Growers that we met are anxious to use some AgroLiquid because it is different and offers advantages to what is being used now.  But they have to try it out first, as this is a new area for AgroLiquid.  But so far so good.

So in addition to all of this, I set up some research trials for next year that will give some data on best applications for AgroLiquid in this land of dry fertilizer.  And then it will truly be a Treasure Valley.