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Chesley, Ontario | The thing to watch out for is mixing ammonium nitrate and urea together. The mixture soaks up so much moisture from the air that you end up with something resembling goose poo. Not happy-making if you are trying to put granular fertilizer through a drill! In the old days (1960's), it was not uncommon for bins to be filled with ammonium nitrate over winter, and when that ran short in the spring they would switch to urea - you can imagine the mess in the bins, because they could never clean out all the dust. Now, we generally have blenders that handle either urea or AN, but not both.
As far as losing strength, any fertilizer in the bin and kept dry will be stable. It is only once it is applied on the field that things start to happen. Some blenders have switched to Calcium Ammonium Nitrate (27-0-0), which is simply AN with 20% limestone mixed in so it won't go "Bang". If you got this instead of AN, and applied at the same rate of product per acre, you would be short 20% of the N you expected.
Keith | |
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Nitrogen fertilizer question
