Metric fertilizer settings

[marshbarn]

i did not know my father had joined the forum. We have this conversation every year.

I’ve now succumbed and just say I’m putting a bag to the acre on and everyone’s happy!

This is the thing a bag to the acre or 34 units, ever one happy , But whats thrown the spanner in the works is we have just bought a all singing all dancing Amazon spreader with weigh cells, control boxs Gps section control and on off, so though it best to go kicking and screaming into the metric system. very sad day for us oldies

 

[bobk]

This is the thing a bag to the acre or 34 units, ever one happy , But whats thrown the spanner in the works is we have just bought a all singing all dancing Amazon spreader with weigh cells, control boxs Gps section control and on off, so though it best to go kicking and screaming into the metric system. very sad day for us oldies

No pounds or cwt's , that's racist

 

[steveR]

I used to work with a guy who’d gone all modern and worked in units/ha‍♂
Now that was confusing!

No worse than every seed merchant with their kilos/ac rates....

 

[steveR]

This is the thing a bag to the acre or 34 units, ever one happy , But whats thrown the spanner in the works is we have just bought a all singing all dancing Amazon spreader with weigh cells, control boxs Gps section control and on off, so though it best to go kicking and screaming into the metric system. very sad day for us oldies

Better to just retire gracefully...

 

[Salopian_Will]

This is the thing a bag to the acre or 34 units, ever one happy , But whats thrown the spanner in the works is we have just bought a all singing all dancing Amazon spreader with weigh cells, control boxs Gps section control and on off, so though it best to go kicking and screaming into the metric system. very sad day for us oldies

Don't tell me that. We have ordered one exactly the same but it has not yet arrived, despite all the assurances that it would be here by now.

 

[zealman]

I thought with brexit and all, metric fertiliser would have been banned

 

[Bogweevil]

Calculator for you to play with: https://www.omnicalculator.com/biology/fertilizer

 

[AlanT]

So where do I need to be for 50 units/Ha of 34.5%N?

 

[DrDunc]

When I was of school age, we had a land wheel driven trailed Taskers (later Econ branded) fertiliser spreader.

To set the rate, you picked combinations of belt pulley and chain sprocket sizes that closest matched

But first my father always needed me to convert the rate for him into that "metric kg units per hect-acre amount thingy"

 

[Bobthebuilder]

Sorry. Not sure what’s going on with the emoji

just a different shirt, oh and hair cut

 

[Cowabunga]

This is the thing a bag to the acre or 34 units, ever one happy , But whats thrown the spanner in the works is we have just bought a all singing all dancing Amazon spreader with weigh cells, control boxs Gps section control and on off, so though it best to go kicking and screaming into the metric system. very sad day for us oldies

You can still work in units per acre converted to cwts per acre of product but just multiply by 125 to convert to kgs per hectare for the machine settings. The only extra step for you is multiplying by 125 while it saves converting kgs of nutrient into kgs of product to be applied.

Nutrient recommendations for grass and forage crops are in a guide called RB209 available to download from AHDB. At the back there is a very useful set of conversion formulas for, for instance, converting the kgs of nutrient per hectare, as in the recommendations, into units per acre so that those of us used to and preferring the unit system can easily do so.

 

[colhonk]

So where do I need to be for 50 units/Ha of 34.5%N?

I work on: 34,5% of a 1cwt bag (now in foreign speak is 50kg) is 34.5 units so each unit weighs 50 / 34.5 = 1.45 kg............ 50 units* 1.45 = 72.5 kg a hec. simples.
Mind you are spreading it a bit thin at that over a hectare.

 

[bobk]

I work on: 34,5% of a 1cwt bag (now in foreign speak is 50kg) is 34.5 units so each unit weighs 50 / 34.5 = 1.45 kg............ 50 units* 1.45 = 72.5 kg a hec. simples.
Mind you are spreading it a bit thin at that over a hectare.

Eh , big bag does 13 acres at 1.5 cwt , all you need to know really

 

[Cowabunga]

After spreading 100 hectares, I checked and after setting my machine for 325kg/ha I have underapplied by 70kgs total. Not bad.

 

[bobk]

After spreading 100 hectares, I checked and after setting my machine for 325kg/ha I have underapplied by 70kgs total. Not bad.

With no changes ? you're wasted .

 

[Cowabunga]

With no changes ? you're wasted .

No changes whatsoever and varied speed according to terrain. Helped by a 17 year old sat-nav and the 12 year old electronic weighing and dosing Vicon Rotaflow.

 

[DrDunc]

No changes whatsoever and varied speed according to terrain. Helped by a 17 year old sat-nav and the 12 year old electronic weighing and dosing Vicon Rotaflow.

Aye, very good, but there nowt there to describe how prominent you've made the light and dark green stripes?

 

[Cowabunga]

Aye, very good, but there nowt there to describe how prominent you've made the light and dark green stripes?

Ha! That literally remains to be seen.

However, experience of over a decade with this machine bodes well.

 

[DrDunc]

Ha! That literally remains to be seen.

However, experience of over a decade with this machine bodes well.

Managed to make "pretty patterns" for the first time last year with my near 20 year old erstwhile faultless Amazone...

Was it the dry weather stressing the grass? Was it the brand new vanes on the discs? Was it the fertiliser company messing with the granule size?

Nope, none of the above: "somebody" forgot to check he'd correctly set the height of the discs, and spread a good 150 acres before realising the error

 

[Cowabunga]

Managed to make "pretty patterns" for the first time last year with my near 20 year old erstwhile faultless Amazone...

Was it the dry weather stressing the grass? Was it the brand new vanes on the discs? Was it the fertiliser company messing with the granule size?

Nope, none of the above: "somebody" forgot to check he'd correctly set the height of the discs, and spread a good 150 acres before realising the error

I spread a field or three with the border spreading deflector down before now. Luckily in most fields I spread back and for’ not round and round, so apart from a large stripe some 20m from the hedge, around the headlands, it was not noticeable. I’ve done the same for mercifully short runs of maybe tens of metres this year as usual. Maybe twice. Not significant.
Years ago I had a mechanic replace a gearbox top grease/oil seal and he didn’t think that it was important to reassemble the exit curtain to one of the disks with any precision. That made a nice pattern on a couple of fields before I noticed that the opening to the disk was about thirty degrees out compared to the other.

I’ve had the curtain grab the spinning disk on rough terrain and being forced to turn out of whack before now. I can tell by the noise the fertiliser makes against the front shield when this happens and I’ve added some tech screws through the stainless steel curtain to add security since early last year. A peculiarity of the design of Vicon Rotaflow is that the static curtain is attached to the hopper basically, with only a mm or so of clearance between it and the spinning disk. The disc is mounted to the base frame of the chassis and with all the weight in the hopper, no doubt there is some flex in the chassis that on rough ground closes the gap between the two. Ordinarily there are only three bolt heads at the top of the curtain located in grooves in a shallow plastic ring that hold it in place and the ring can easily flex, allowing the curtain to turn out of place, usually by 120 degrees to the next groove in the plastic ring.