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Coldwater, Michigan | Bill,
That is why when someone says: "my soil test says I should put on "x" number of pounds of this or that, I have been known to say " that's what somebody told you, not what your soil test says".
First of all your soil test says only one thing; values some soils lab has found in the sample they were sent. Even if you assume those to be correct, you soil didn't say what you need to apply.
What you "need to apply" is determined by someone's "OPINION" of the soil test results. If you asked me, and someone else, that had exactly the same schooling as I have had, but had worked in the industry 5 or more years, to make a soil test recommendation; and we weren't in the same room as the other, we would have different answers for you. If you then put us in the same room and said you wanted a consensus, you would get still a different answer. Everybody making recommendations has a different philosophy of what they think they see. It was not unusual when the soil test came back calling for no "P" needed, I was known to make a "P" starter recommendation. It wasn't unheard of me to ask someone how low they could set their JD planter (or IH, White) fertilizer rates, so that we only got starter rates of high "P" starter on the field.
I guess it was only natural for me to go from low rates of 10-34-0, or some low rate of dry in the 2" x 2" placement to putting a safer product in the seed trench where it would do the most good. A Terra manager, who knew me, once asked how I had come to "CHANGE" my beliefs. If you read the above again, you will see there was no change to happen. I did refine my ideas, I did not "change" them.
Simply put, if you're not needing to apply large amounts of starter, put the limited amount where it will do the most good.
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Soil Test Costs ?
