If you believe in the many and varied weather predictions, such as ‘Thunder on All Fool’s day, it brings good crops of corn and hay’ or ‘Rain on St. Johns Day (June 24th) expect a wet harvest’, there is no way of being able to reliably predict what weather we may get in the next four weeks, let alone foresee what will happen in May, June and July.
Yet, these months are the most critical for top dressed nitrogen applications, due to crop demand being at its greatest, the crops flower, set seeds and enter their bulking stage – critical for tonnage. Prilled nitrogen application efficiency is completely at the mercy of the weather.
A dry, arid time post application, as we saw in 2022, and the nitrogen sits on top of the soil doing nothing, due to the lack of moisture to dissolve it and to carry it through the soil to the crop’s roots.
One way around this is to feed the crop through its canopy via foliar applications. These ensure direct absorption of the applied micro and macro nutrients within minutes of treatment, therefore providing the crop with ‘what it needs – when it needs it’, not when the weather makes it available.
As with all product development, today’s third-generation mixes bear little resemblance to the initial products created 30 years ago, having been produced by modern chemical and biochemical engineering.
This has eliminated the previous issues, such as leaf scorch, and ensures rain-fast in 30 minutes, while also allowing full hashtag#nutrient treatment programmes, including nitrogen to be delivered in a single dose without scorching.
Feed the crop – not the soil….
Read more about Folia-N – Nitrogen Foliar Fertiliser here
