As with any farming practice, taking a run at a polycrop forage blend can lead to varying results based on your location, weather and management strategies.
Tag Archives nitrates
Lessons learned growing forage mixtures for beef production
While polycrop forage blends offer many benefits, farmers need to adapt their strategies to their specific environments
Nitrogen, nitrates and nitrites
Know the names and natures of the nutritious and noxious
Nitrogen goes makes up 80 per cent of the air that we breathe in the form of a very stable N2 gas. In my several years at university I majored in chemistry and my work on nitrogen was intensive, from its biological role to its key role in almost all military explosives. Nitrogen is one […] Read more
Digging into the cause of poor yields
Did drought, fertility issues or something else lead to that poor crop? We look at the possibilities
Your client’s crop yielded poorly, and they assume it was due to drought. But you suspect it may be a fertility issue. How can you accurately diagnose the problem? Let us first examine what dry and drought mean. A dry year means reduced crop growth and reduced nutrient uptake, since biological, chemical and physical processes […] Read more
Nitrate down the well
Soils & Crops: If you move onto an old farmyard with an existing well, don’t drink the water without first getting it tested
This column has dealt with this topic several times over the decades we have been scribbling. Recent sources have raised the nitrate issue again. It deserves repeating once in a while, to make sure no more infants die from the blue-baby condition (methemoglobinemia). The link between nitrate-contaminated farmyard wells and blue-baby was first reported by […] Read more
Play it safe with high nitrates
Proper management of drought-affected forages can reduce the risk to livestock
This year’s drought taught me many lessons about the dangers of high nitrates in beef cow forage. That is why I recommend that all cow-calf producers test all their harvested forages for nitrates, whatever field it came from. It’s going to be money well spent, whether tests are negative or positive. And if they are […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
