Satellites, Tissue Samples, & Biostimulants
By: Mark Bradke, Sales Manager
Some of you may remember the movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles. In short, it was a comedy about a couple of gentlemen trying to get home by any means possible in time for Thanksgiving. When one form of transportation fell apart, they were on to the next, until they finally reached their goal. Mr. High Stress – Steve Martin – meet Mr. Low Stress – John Candy.
Growing a crop is a similar experience. As much as we would prefer ideal growing conditions – low stress – the reality is that after planting a crop, the adventure is just beginning. Do we have enough nitrogen? What diseases are coming? Insects, weather stress, nutrient deficiencies, and seemingly, on and on and on. Something, some way, is always threatening to rob yield – high stress!
As new tools become available in the agriculture industry, rest assured that our agronomy team is engaged in monitoring stress levels in your fields. Satellite imagery, tissue sampling, and utilizing biostimulants are tools that we are integrating into our daily crop scouting and yield protection processes.
We can gain insight from satellite imagery that allows us to study fields that are planted within a 5-day period and compare them to other same-crop fields. We can then take those images out to your field to ground-truth our suspicions.
The next step is to take tissue samples to confirm whether the crop has sufficient macronutrients (N,P,K) and/or micronutrients to maximize yield. Once those nutrient levels are processed from the lab, we may recommend side-dressing additional nitrogen. From those same tissue samples, you also may decide to add additional micronutrients in with a planned herbicide pass. Or based upon current growing conditions, we may plan a more robust fall fertilizer program to provide adequate nutrients for next year’s crop.
Another tool we recommend is utilizing biostimulant products such as Stimtide. This product utilizes peptides to naturally stimulate the plant’s ability to break down existing soil nutrients. For more information on biostimulants and Stimtide specifically, check out our blog article here.
As our characters learned in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, one “vehicle” may only take you so far toward reaching your destination. In today’s environment of striving to maximize yield, multiple vehicles are both needed and available to successfully reach your goals.