The soil and plants in your fields, along with the atmosphere and water cycle, make up a natural food production system, as crops are food factories. The raw materials required by the factories are air (specifically carbon dioxide and nitrogen gases), water, 20 or so mineral elements from the soil, and the factory’s power source, sunlight. The factory uses photosynthesis to combine carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to produce food in the form of sugar. Therefore, it’s essential to apply products that amplify this process and promote full-throttle photosynthesis early on and as far into the season as possible.
Plants need more nitrogen than any other element obtained from the soil, and it’s often deficient during the growing season. So how can we do a better job of predicting and meeting our plants’ peak nitrogen demands? There are a number of factors influencing the overall availability of nitrogen, like your level of SOM (Soil Organic Matter), use of cover cropping and available crop residues, concentration in irrigation water, and organic amendments like compost and compost teas. While all of these provide nitrogen and are helpful, they make the nitrogen available at varied, and not necessarily optimal times.
Meanwhile, the effectiveness of granular or liquid fertilizers, with the latter being able to be applied via fertigation or foliar spray, are affected by SOM. SOM plays an important role in the availability of nitrogen through the mineralization process. The higher levels of soil bacteria that thrive in greater percentages of SOM accelerate the change of ammonia into ammonium (called ammonification), ammonium into nitrite and then nitrite into nitrate (called nitrification). Thus, a higher level of SOM generates a higher and longer release rate from externally applied nitrogen. Simply put, your get more bang for the buck from your fertilizers.
Andaman Ag is a strong believer in year-round attention to SOM and early-season applications of soil and foliar fertilizers. Pere99nnial crops are hungry coming out of dormancy. It’s documented that the period of greatest nitrogen uptake is after full bloom through the green fruit period. Once fruit starts to ripen, the need for nitrogen has passed. If we can get the plant as healthy as possible prior to fruit set then the fruit should be better, and once fruit set takes place the majority of nutrition uptake is channeled to the fruit.