Liquid fert

[Theswede]

Another thread in the forum got me curious of liquid fert. In Sweden it is almost not used at all, only a few use it on their maize crop.

How are you using it "on the other side of the pond"? On what crops? Is i cheaper? More effective compared to granulated or prilled fert? Is it just N you are after in liquid fert?

Please enlighten me on the subject!

 

[Brisel]

There's lots of big users of liquid in here & I'm sure they will comment.

I use both solid & liquid as I don't have the machinery capacity to do one exclusively. I only use straight N as Yara Nuram N37 but sulphur & NPK grades are available too. It works well with good sprayer capacity & especially at wider tramline widths where it is harder to get a good spread pattern with solid fertilisers.

It is more likely to cause scorch than solid but is available to the plant more quickly as it is closer to the final NH4 & NO3 product that the plants need.

Cheaper? Not unless you can buy distressed product & melt it yourself. It's priced relatively close to good quality solid ammonium nitrate prills but works out a bit cheaper than solid when I take into account the extra cost of a loader to handle the bags & a shed to store it in. Bulk liquid is much easier to cart around & the tanks can be bought or rented from the supplier.

 

[T Hectares]

I use 100% liquid N + S per year.
Big benefits are accuracy of application, especially around headlands where 100% of rate is applied up to the edge of the field and better overlap control is achieved with use of auto section control.

Better utilisation of sprayer and bowser and convenient storage / handling are other pluses.

Sprayer capacity needs to be large enough to accomadate both applications, but I find quite a few efficiencies from liquid.

For example, I will often apply N in the morning in a dew, swap to spraying during the day when the crops are dry, and back to N in the evening, this is without having to swap machines over or driving back to base to change over.

With a bit of planning it can be used to wash out the sprayer, reducing downtime.

 

[Niels]

Liquid fertiliser has been around since the 50s? And was used a long time ago in the UK. Really became fashion some ten years ago in Holland and the last 2-3 years it is getting in a higher gear. The fact that less NPK can be used means a switch towards precision applications and liquid fertilisers lend themselves much better to this. Also waste products are upgraded and used. The world supply of phosphate, lime etc.. will run out so will have to find something else. Easy to apply, especially at large widths. Potato growers spraying 54 metres here to save up on tramlines (8% yield loss) and don't want to run with a fert spreader in between. Also when planting/drilling much easier using it. Cheaper most of the cases as well.