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Coldwater, Michigan | Dan,
When I say the good stuff, in this case I'm discussing a "good" 6-24-6 used as a seed-place starter product. How do you tell? Well to be fair, that is what I spent 13 years testing and trying different products to find out. And today 4 years later, I'm still trying different combinations. During that time I spent a good bit of time with different products from several different companies, lots of different analysis, and yes, Fu Fu dust!
Most of them don't work! Nothing new there was there? While I was with Alpine Plant Foods, we went thru a phase where we decided we needed a product for the Biological people. Humates and Humic acids had all the science behind them, had been tested at a couple of different Universities and everywhere you could imagine. Good stuff. Problem was you really couldn't get enough of the material into the mix by dumping it into an existing product to do any good. If you dumped too much in, it settled out, not good!
We started from the beginning to build a humic product where we could get substantially more into the mix. It had issues with handling, but the point turned out to be it usually yielded less than the best product in our current line up. It wasn't a bad product, it just never did as well as our best product. That was consistent wherever we tested it. End of the line for those products for the most part after 3 years.
So, how do you know when you have a good one? I'm not a stickler for "Ortho" products. They have their place, such as combining them with Round Up, but generally not in the seed trench. In the seed trench I have tested 10-34-0, as well as some products with a higher "Ortho" content, up to and including 100% "Ortho" products. 100% "Ortho" products are usually sold on their absolute purity (therefore they have to be better). Well an 80/20% "orhto/poly", or even a 70/30% "ortho/poly" solution usually does as well as a 100% "Ortho" product in the seed trench.
So a 6-24-6 should be in the neighborhood of a 80/20%, or 70/30% range of Ortho vs Poly. That doesn't make it a good one. That only lays the foundation, and that is where some of the manufacturers stop. That one could have been a "good" one, but they stopped too soon. In a good year it will show a positive response, usually not! Over 5 years the average tends to be no better than a couple of bushels per acre over the no starter treatment, in Michigan. Of course 10-34-0 seed-placed generally doesn't look any better than that either, and it is cheaper. Well, maybe not anymore!
The better 6-24-6's have the higher Ortho content, have a very low, or no Urea content. Urea is hard on the seed. That's where a lot of the 100% ortho products have problems, particulary if the Nitrogen analysis is 8, 9 or above. The better 6-24-6 products also have Pottasium Hydroxide as the potash source. This helps keep the salt index down. The better 6-24-6 products carry a good package of Micronutrients. Most obvious for corn would of course be Zinc. For beans (that's another issue entirely). In addition to Zinc, there is a call for some other micros. That's where my current formula was developed, and that info is why you buy my products. Just suffice it to say: when the weather is cool/cold in the early part of planting particularly, it doesn't matter what your soil test says is there. It isn't available to the plant until the soil warms up enough to release those nutrients.
I have planted corn in my plots when the temperature was in the 80 degree+ area, and within 3 days it had it's first frost. Had 2 more frosts before it emerged. Sometimes you don't know what kind of weather that crop needs to endure. By the way, when I plant plots they usually stretch the length of the field and have at least 3 replications per location. Most seed company corn plots only have 1 replication/location. So you can see I probably have better data than the most seed companies for a particular location.
I should also state I have not been a part of the Alpine, or the NaChurs/Alpine organizations for the past 4 years.
To sum everything up: A "Good" 6-24-6 is a high Ortho/Poly solution with a low Urea content, pottasium Hydroxide as the potash source, and a nice dose of Zinc (probably some EDTA to keep the Zinc availabe). Also, a multi micro package as well. If the 6-24-6 you are looking at has those qualities, it probably will be a good one. That is how you tell!
Edited by Bill Moyer 1/6/2008 06:55
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10-34-0 popup vs in furrow 2 by 2
