This article originally appeared in the AGVISE Laboratories Spring 2025 Newsletter. There may not be silly questions, but there are silly answers. Every so often, we get questions about unusual solutions to manage calcareous soils in the northern Great Plains and Canadian Prairies. The most frequent oddball “solutions” involve lowering soil pH with elemental sulfur […]
This article originally appeared in the AGVISE Laboratories Spring 2024 Newsletter. Over the winter months, we received a lot of questions about the increasing soybean cyst nematode (SCN) egg count trends across the region. Soybean cyst nematode is the most damaging soybean pest in the United States, and the problem is becoming worse. The AGVISE […]
Zone soil sampling has become a standard practice in precision nutrient management, but the grand question remains – How many zones should you be soil sampling? Well, it depends! It just makes sense that a field with more variability requires more zones than a field with little variability. Zone soil sampling separates parts of fields […]
This article was originally published in the AGVISE Laboratories Winter 2023 Newsletter. In the fall of 2022, I hired a custom applicator to haul and spread lime across 238 acres of my family’s farm in western North Dakota. The reason? To increase soil pH on five fields with very low soil pH. One field even […]
The 2023 drought was an all-too-soon reminder of the widespread 2021 drought. It covered much of the upper Midwest, Great Plains, and Canadian Prairies. From previous experience with droughts, we expected that residual soil nitrate-N following crops would be higher than normal, caused by the drought and reduced crop yields. The first wheat fields that […]
This article originally appeared in the AGVISE Laboratories Spring 2023 Newsletter John Breker was appointed to the North American Proficiency Testing Program Oversight Committee as the North Central Region representative, starting in January 2023. The North American Proficiency Testing (NAPT) Program assists soil, plant, and water laboratories with quality control and quality assurance through inter-laboratory […]
Small grain harvest is well underway across the region, and soil testing is progressing quickly. Crop yields have varied from below average to exceeding expectations across the region and often in the same area. Planting date, summer temperatures, and rainfall (too little or too much) were major factors this year. The major factors influencing the […]
This article originally appeared in the AGVISE Laboratories Winter 2022 Newsletter. The 2021 drought rivals the 1988 drought, and it covered much of the northern Great Plains and Canadian Prairies. From previous experience with droughts, we expected that residual soil nitrate-N following crops would be higher than normal, caused by the drought and reduced crop […]
This article originally appeared in the AGVISE Laboratories Winter 2022 Newsletter This is the third year of our soybean cyst nematode (SCN) resistance project. Each year, we have flagged spots in soybean fields and collected paired SCN soil samples in June and September. If the SCN egg count increases through summer and into fall, we […]
It’s probably more than you think. So far, the residual soil nitrate-nitrogen trend following corn is much higher than average across the upper Midwest and northern Great Plains. This follows the same trend set by the 2021 wheat crop. For many growers in the region, the hot and dry growing season has resulted in high […]