Fertilizing forages with Cedric MacLeod and Christine O'Reilly

This week on The Agronomists, host Lyndsey Smith is joined by Christine O'Reilly of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness and Cedric MacLeod of MacLeod Agronomics to discuss the super novel and different idea of fertilizer and nutrient applications on forage stands. What productivity gains can we make? What about persistence? What nutrients are needed when? Stay connected! Follow The Agronomists on TikTok or Instagram to see highlights and get updates on upcoming shows! CCA Credit Form The Agronomists is brought to you by Wheat Pete's Word, Canola School and Profitable Practices Today on RealAg Radio, your host Shaun Haney is joined by Margy Eckelkamp of The Scoop to unpack the current state of ag retail in North America! Today’s discussion will help paint a picture of what she hears from ag retailers and what separates a successful retailer from an unsuccessful retailer. Also on today’s show,... Our sponsors tonight are Wheat Pete's Word, The Canola School, and Profitable Practises. Profitable Practises on Real Agriculture is a video series featuring Canadian producers who are adopting farm practises to have a positive impact on profit, People and the planet. Profitable Practises is made possible by support from Farm Credit Canada and RBC Royal Bank. Find out more at RealAgriculture.com/profitable-practices. Hello everyone, welcome to The Agronomist. I am your host, Lyndsey Smith. Thank you so much for joining us here. A few minutes late, but we made it. There's a lot going on behind the scenes, everybody. Thanks everybody for letting us know where you're joining from, what the crop looks like where you are, and of course, as we go through tonight's conversation, let us know if you've got any questions. Ask early, ask often. And if you collect CEU credits, make sure that you head on over to RealAgriculture.com/agronomists tomorrow, let us know you took in the show, and we will get you signed up. Thanks, Lyndsey. signed up for those as well. And while you're there, sign up for our free e-newsletter. It goes out every Wednesday. It has the most current episode and of course some related storeys that go with it as well. All right, we are into the— I guess now we can say on the back half of August, and this is, I know, a prime time to fertilise forages. It is possible, you guys, we can fertilise them, and that's what we're going to talk about tonight. And so I'm so excited to have this conversation. Bringing in tonight's guests, we've got Cedric MacLeod of MacLeod Agronomics and of course the Canadian Forage and Grasslands Association out of New Brunswick, and Christine O'Reilly with OMAFRA, our grazing and forage specialist. Okay, OMAFRA. Welcome here, Cedric and Christine. Thanks for having us. It was a pleasure to be with you, Lyndsey. All right, okay, so I am quite excited about tonight's topic because we get to spend a whole hour geeking out about forages, and that makes me incredibly happy. But before we get going on that, Cedric, I don't know if you've been on the show in a while. Would you like to introduce yourselves to the peeps watching along? I think, Lyndsey, this is probably the first time I've actually been on the show. I think so. It might be. It is a pleasure, and I almost think that maybe this is Rolling on from our time together in Halifax at the FTP meetings, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, it is true. So I've been running McLeod Agronomics since about 2003, so a little over 2 decades. It's taken me down a number of different paths. I was a soil scientist by training, so that's soil fertility and soil health is kind of the foundation of my Agronomy practise. And I think as we were talking earlier about, I think, some of the ideas that Christine is going to share, been working on this concept of a forage data management system that encompasses lots of different facets of forage production, but it comes right down to cost of production and being able to make really solid management decisions based on the numbers, not on feeling or thought or or history or even anecdote. So that's been, that's been kind of my life's passion. And, and of course, a lot of the things we're doing with, with the CFJA, Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, are really hinged to obviously soil carbon, biodiversity, those sorts of things on the landscape. But it all comes back to advanced forage productivity and enhanced— Those production— Reduced moss production and/or overall increase profitability on the farm. So that's where I come from, and I guess I do manage a couple 400 acres down here in New Brunswick with my wife and son Caelan, grass-fed beef operation, and do a little annual cropping for seed production. So thanks for making time because A, it's quite late where you are, and B, you're a busy man, so there you go. It's also late for Christine and I, Christine O'Reilly, one What is keeping you busy right now, especially as we look to what we could be doing with our forages right now in the field? Yeah, summer field projects on the research side are sort of winding down, especially because university students are going back to school. We rely on them. But no, in terms of what's timely right now, Forages is the crop that never ends, and kind of what we do from now to the end of the growing season really sets up those perennial crops and overwintering crops for next year. So this is the start of the forage production year in a lot of ways. And I think your topic tonight is absolutely perfect because getting the right fertility on now or within the next month-ish, depending on where in the country you are, That's often where you can get the most bang for your buck on some of those nutrients, and then you might as well get the rest out there to save a pass across the field. Okay, so let's start there perhaps. Why is now such a critical time to feed some of these forages, Christine? Why is it— what is it about this time of year that matters? Those plants are starting to harden off for winter, so they're changing how, um, how water happens inside the plant. So they're trying to change some of those processes so that you don't have freeze-thaw cycles actually rupturing plant cells. That would kill the plant. Right. And potassium is actually a major nutrient involved in water regulation. So K applications in late summer and early fall is the best bang for your buck to get it on because that's right before the crop needs it to harden off for winter. So it's really potassium, that's the big one for this late summer, early fall window. But since that crop is growing the rest of the growing season and we don't always have a lot of opportunities to get nutrients out on a perennial crop, if you're going to make the pass to put on the potash, you might as well put phosphorus with it, potentially some elemental sulphur with it depending on where you are and what the crop needs, that this is the best time of year to do it for a lot of those nutrients. Cedric, if now is a great time because we have to think about winter survivability, etc., when is the second best time to be adding some nutrients back to our forage systems? Well, I guess some of that will hinge on soil condition, but obviously early in the spring, you know, if you're going to get a touch of nitrogen out there to get things woken up, obviously the earlier the better. To Christine's point, if you haven't had a chance to put on some replacement phosphorus, obviously you're going to touch that in with the nitrogen. I agree 100%, let's get that potassium on in the fall wherever possible. If you're rolling across the field and you got to put phosphorus on anyway, get it done. Then really when it comes, when you're coming into the spring season, you've got other options besides elemental because you can use ammonium sulphate or some of those more soluble sulphur products, which would put it at risk if you're putting it down in the fall. Depending on your full programme, either early in the spring or after that first cut, if you can, to keep it pushing through. But really it depends, I think, on what you're set up for equipment. I personally do a lot of my spreading in the summer after that first cut. We use a lot of bark ash product down here, and I'll probably talk about that a little bit. later on. But, you know, heavy spreaders, so soils are in good condition that way, so we don't have to worry about compaction. And that, I think, that's certainly, Christine, for maybe the Ontario example. I don't think, Cedric, I've ever heard of bark ash, so this is exciting. I love learning new things. But we often get that question after like first cut, right, Christine, with manure or something like that, or second cut. When is the best time? Yeah, absolutely. Manure applications, sometimes those get fit in immediately after a cut because you got to get that storage empty. That's, that's absolutely part of it. I guess the other timing piece would be nitrogen on grassy fields. So if you're trying to get a perennial grassy stand to tiller, you want that in early fall. If you're just looking for a bigger first cut, early spring. So the timing, because it'll encourage tillering early in the fall, but once you get into the spring, it's not going to get those plants tillering as much. So it's not going to fill in gaps, say if you had a very dry year and the stand thinned. The spring is just going to make the plants you do have bigger. So nitrogen timing changes a little bit how grass responds to that. So Christine, on that, when, if you're going to do a split, how, what kind of a percentage split do you think you'd go for in the fall versus spring? Obviously we want to minimise, you know, carryover and make sure it's assimilated into the, into the plant. So how would you split that? Yeah, I guess I am still hesitant to suggest more than that, like 50 to 75 pounds an acre of actual N. If you get above 75, we might run into problems with nitrate accumulation in the plant. So in the spring, I'd be very wary of excessively high rates. In the fall, I also wouldn't want to put on excessively high rates because if the plant doesn't use it all, then we're Yeah. So, yeah, like if you look at temperate climates where they really manage grass aggressively, they'll put on, you know, that 50 to 75 pounds an acre after every cut and take 6 cuts. So like ryegrass in Ireland, it's fertilised the way we fertilise corn in Ontario. Like it's wild how much nitrogen they put on that crop. We don't have the length of the growing season. Ryegrass is exceptionally hungry. So dialling that back a little bit, but still keeping in mind, you know, this is a grass. It needs nitrogen, especially if it's not grown in conjunction with a lot of legumes. So yeah, I would say probably no more than 75 pounds of actual N at one time, but it can be fertilised after every cut, theoretically. Okay. Peter Wheat Pete Johnson, he's a first-time caller. No, I'm just kidding. He says, how much P or K can I put on in the fall Is there an upper limit? Let's say you've got a poor soil test of 10-P and 80-K. How heavy can we go without concern? Christine, I'll maybe go to you on this one. We do have some slides about potassium and some of these other questions about how much is too much. Yeah, and Cedric may have a different answer to this. I don't have specific concerns about burning a crop as long as it's not a seedling. Like an establishment year crop. Yeah. Yeah, at least in Ontario, the recommendations are based on soil test. So the lower that soil test, the higher the amount of nutrients we suggest gets applied. There may be some limitations in terms of we can't incorporate that material on a perennial stand that's already established. So I think it'll come more to logistical concerns rather than crop safety concerns, but I'll Let Cedric weigh in on that. Yeah, no, I agree. And I mean, especially on phosphorus, you know, I'm always leery about putting too much phosphorus out in the fall, right? Overland flow, you know, trying to keep the phosphorus on the landscape as we can. But what I typically do with my nutrient management clients is obviously come back to the soil test, and quite often, believe it or not, we're running low in potash or below optimal levels. So what I try and do is make sure obviously we're getting enough to cover off that crop from a removals perspective, and then maybe do like a 2 to 3 year build on soil test levels to get it there. A lot of it is pocketbook. Sometimes, you know, you get behind the 8 ball, like we got to build that potassium, like I just can't even begin to afford it. I'm like, okay, Let's make sure again, we're keeping up with removals and we're going to build it over time. You know, caveat to that, I think, and this has unfortunately played out with a lot of clients. I said, listen, guys, gals, like this product is only going to get more expensive. Right. So the longer you wait to build to optimal levels so that you can just move to crop removal, the more expensive it's going to be. And we're seeing that now with straight and that phosphorus, sulphur, I mean, just blowing my mind, right? So the time to get it up to spec is certainly sooner than later. So, and this also speaks to why we would want to do this, and there's more reasons than just necessarily yield. We mentioned this time of year we're talking about persistence, so we're talking about Overwintering. We want to make sure that we've got those plants into the spring. But persistence to me, Christine, is also about like your overall productivity and overall cost of production. Like in my mind, if to Cedric's point, if I make sure that I don't let those levels get drawn down too low, I know that that stand should stick around for those 10 cuts or 12 cuts or whatever I'm going to take out of it. for that many years. And Kristine, you've got a couple slides on this, or one slide, I think it's slide 2, talking about balanced fertility that I think would be a good point to sort of talk about. And so on this persistence piece, on this balanced piece, what does balanced nutrition really mean for a forage? Yeah, so it's when you think about how the, like, the ratios of different nutrients that plants put in their tissue, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium is roughly a 3-1-2 Now this trial was done in Purdue. They were looking at alfalfa. So because it's a legume, we're not worried about the nitrogen. We're assuming everything nodulated fine, it's taking care of that itself. So they were just looking at phosphate and potash. And if you look at treatment A in the bottom left and treatment C in the bottom right, those were treatments where they applied phosphate. but not potash. And as you can see, those plots are mostly dandelions. Mm-hmm. So what sometimes happens when that fertiliser budget is limited, and if, you know, having manure around always helps, like manure is a fantastic source of crop nutrients and most livestock farms have it, but it's not balanced either, right? Because the livestock have taken some of the nutrients for their own life purposes, so it's not balanced. And what happens is if we have a really unbalanced In terms of if it's really unbalanced in terms of what's available, we're not seeing that same persistence. Now, this may also come back a bit to the fact that, like we talked about, K is super important for that overwintering and that water regulation. But I think it's really interesting that even the treatment D, so where they have still more phosphate than potash, right, it's 150 pounds an acre phosphate and 100 pounds of potash. D still looks all right. It might not be the absolute tallest plot in this photo, but it made it through even though that ratio is a bit out of whack. But you need both because sometimes when the budget's tight, it's tempting to just do one. My suggestion might be pick a field and do it right rather than pick a nutrient and do it everywhere, just as a way to make the budget go a little further and still get that benefit in that stand. So that, and that's a really good point of, I like how you phrase that, of the balance of these, right, of the nutrients that work together. If the budget does not allow to potentially do every field, better to do both nutrients on the fields you can versus going all out on just phosphorus and forgetting about the potassium or vice versa. Darren also notes, because Pete says, all right, You know, would £800 to get the potash where we need it be okay? Pete, I'm going to say no one in their right mind is going to spend that kind of money because let's also remember these are forages. We're having a hard enough time getting people to spend $20, let alone that many dollars. So yes, there's an agronomic limit, but there is also a physical limit and there's more importantly an economic limit. So yes, so but Cedric, on that point. Better to think about balance versus volume, yes or no? Well, I think it depends. I'm thinking about a farm that I worked on in Newfoundland, and I don't know, we had 52 fields, and looking through the soil test, it was all over the place, right? If you know the history of Newfoundland, right, last 2 decades, they've pushed a lot of bush, Right, they got lime subsidy programmes, they got great programmes to get the soils up and going, but, you know, we had new farms, old farms all over the place, and so we started profiling and we were doing bales and so we started counting bales and we had weights and we started to stack it all up and we said, okay, which farms are pushing close to 10 and which are pushing close to 3? This is bales per acre, right? Right. On the 10s, we were able to come with a base level of annual fertility including the manure, agreed 100% with Christine, I mean use that resource to its maximum potential off the hop, but where we started to focus was in those $5 billion an acre farms because we could, through some strategic investment, we could get them working up and as long as we didn't let that first tranche of farms go down, right, the whole kind of the rising tide floats all boats. And once we had those middles done, and then we moved along, and I think that was a really effective way for us to make an investment in that production, but also time, right, from the grower perspective, right. So I think this is where Christine, where I don't want to steal the thunder, but she's going to talk about how we all work together to build strategies on how to maximise forage output across an entire land base is so critical. Pete is telling me that there are growers who are willing to apply 800 pounds of potash if needed, and I'm gonna say, would they like to adopt me? Because I don't have those kind of dollars. Now he does. I guess I'll make one more point because I know Pete's really stuck on this thought exercise. The thing he might be forgetting is we don't have, in most places, we don't have just one opportunity. to apply fertility, whether it's manure or purchased fertiliser, to a forage crop. In many places, this is a multi-harvest crop and we got multiple years to do it. So it's, it's not like growing wheat where you get like a pre-plant kind of a timing and then early spring you're done. That's it. The crop is over. We have, we have more than one window to apply. And so you could split that up as well. Well, we even have opportunities to add species back. Like we do, guys. Okay, sorry. Well, and to Pete's point, right, let's do the math. He obviously wants to get in on this, right? So 800 pounds of potash at 60% gives you 480 pounds of K2O per acre, right? And we're going to remove, Christine, right, back me up here, 150 to 200 pounds in an alfalfa crop. So if you're transitioning from a corn crop or, you know, you're coming out of maybe soybeans, right, so you're deficient and you want to put one shot of potash down while you work, maybe you work that ground and get your alfalfa established, you got 3 years worth of supply there, right, and you might come out, keep coming over the top with a little bit more, but it does make sense from that perspective to make sure that that soil nutrient bank account is full. Yeah, okay, Producer Jay, and there's some great stuff, Mark weighs in here that ROI is the first thing a person needs to consider when growing anything. Forages are okay. I would argue though, Mark, people have forgotten that when it comes to forages because we treat them like they are just supposed to perform regardless. We put them in the ground, maybe we feed them every once in a while a bit of manure. But I'm guilty of this too, is that, you know, some years they look great and I did very little. And I think, could we do this all the time? No, the answer is no. You have to feed them. They also need nutrients. Okay, let's just pause for just a moment. Producer Jay, let's go to our second read of the night and then we'll come back to our conversation. Our sponsors tonight are Profitable Practises, Wheat Pete's Word, and the Canola School. From pre-seeding seeder setup and cheques to pest insect identification and advice on nutrient management decisions to tips on determining swath timing, Real Agriculture's Canola School covers every facet of the canola growing season. The Canola School is made possible through sponsorship by BASF Canada and InVigor hybrid canola. Learn more at canolaschool.com. What a jam. Okay, Mark asked about fertility onto pastures, we can talk about that in a minute, and Cedric's got some great photos I want to go through as well, but Jason Vogt asked, What would your fertiliser strategy be if you have forage on sand versus heavy clay? So where does soil type weigh in on this? Christine, do you want to go first or Cedric, do you want to go first? Pretty simply, you got to be able to hold on to it. Okay, yeah, right, when it comes down to sand. And, and, and on the other side, um, you know, I'm thinking about Red River Valley, right, and, and, uh, you know, its ability to hold on, hold on to phosphorus, right? We know this Potassium supplies there. But yeah, I think it's critical in those sandy soils thinking about that sulphur, obviously nitrogen, both soluble, boron, soluble, another key one to hold on the alfalfa. I tend to lean for most of those nutrients into spring application, but as Christine has rightly said, if we need potassium, fall is a good chance to fire that on too. The answer, as always, being safe is it depends. It's our favourite here on the show. Christine? I mean, I was going to echo Cedric's comments on sulphur and boron, particularly on sand. That's— those are the soil type— soil textures that you tend to see those deficiencies show up first in alfalfa. A lot of our other species don't tell us as readily when they're deficient in anything. Besides nitrogen. So alfalfa is the one that'll actually show us deficiency symptoms. Everything else is just kind of look at the soil test, look at the tissue test, guess. Yeah. I'll be brave enough to admit that I've seen potassium show up in pretty good— Oh wow, there you go. It doesn't make me happy, but I'm— No, but I mean, you've actually seen, you've seen some symptoms. Yeah, that's unusual. Yeah, good. Yeah, so there you go. Okay, so one of the other things, and we will talk about sort of working together, but I think let's go to slide or photo, I think it's 4 of Cedric's. We've got some other ones first, but you've got a few groupings here of different situations that you want to talk through, and I think this one, by the third one, I think is where the bark ash comes in. Talk to me about this stuff, but what are we looking at? What are we assessing here? Yeah, so this is actually a farm that I farm and this is the 7th year of this crop. We seeded Shockwave alfalfa, targeted 60% alfalfa and the standard 40% grass, and this is the crop that just keeps on giving. I guess when I went out this morning and took these photos to get ready, I like to kind of get myself in the headspace. And so when I looked at it again, and obviously it is getting tired and this landlord has decided that there's no more herbicide or fungicide to be sprayed on this operation. So I'm now in a bit of a corner because I obviously am not going to want to go in and put alfalfa directly back in here. So it's going to get ploughed and we're going to start rolling over with the no-till drill and introducing red clover because again, I don't want to be relying on nitrogen. But this has been serviced with a bark ash product and this comes out of the pulp and paper industry. here in New Brunswick. It's a fantastic mix of phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, and a bunch of micros, but also calcium and magnesium. So it's actually a direct substitute for calcitic or dolomitic lime, plus it gives us the value of the PKNS and the micros. Yeah. I've been spreading this on all my forage ground. A lot of the ground I farm are the corners that the potato growers don't want to farm, and so I don't want to work them, right? I've been a no-tiller for 20 years, it's not in the DNA, but the bark ash is so fine it works its way in, right? And, you know, the rain takes it in and the freeze-thaw takes it in, and so this is what we're able to manage with that product. But as you can see, right, starting to break up a little bit, we're starting to see some patches, it's thinning out, Christine, so I think the recommendation here would be to get this thickened back up with legume. Correct me if I'm wrong, and always looking for that magic number of 40%. I remember Dan Andersander stating as long as we maintain a 40% legume content, then there shouldn't be an additional response to supplemental nitrogen on the grass crop. Good point there. This is where something like going back in with the red clover, something else to try and fill in some of those gaps. But 7 years, Cedric, I think that's pretty, it's pretty good for 7 years. I've seen— How many cuts do you typically take per year? So I've been, this will be the second, 3 out of those 7 years I've taken 3 cuts. And so maybe, maybe a little unique. So we'll take first, second cut, put bark ash in after first cut, do a second cut as hay in August, and then what I've been doing is actually letting it grow till after first frost, and my third cutting comes, you know, after dormancy is, is set in. Okay, okay. That makes more sense? Yeah, that makes sense as to why it still has this much alfalfa in the stand, because that third cut is dormant. It doesn't feel it the same way. Yeah, right. Okay, can we go to the next photo, Jay? And I guess my question, so, well, that's quite lovely. Okay, Cedric, what are we looking at now? This is the next field over, and that same field. Okay, yeah, interesting. Yeah, so again, I was marvelling a little bit at how— Marvelling. Yeah, it's quite nice. Yeah, okay. I will take, I will take this moment to identify that this seed was a certified Shockwave alfalfa with certified Barenbrug grasses that went along with it. Certified high-performance seed. Okay, so one of the things that we do, and so there's a question there about pasture, we don't— we have hay fields that are hay fields, but we also will take a cut By grazing. We will have— we'll run livestock across them and take third cut or whatever it might be as grazing. Christine, when I try to work that into the idea of how that works in the math for the nutrient addition and removal, it gets a little more complicated. Is there a rule of thumb of like, you know, how much is actually removed if we're taking a Cut, but it's grazed off. Yeah. So the soil test drawdown is really different between pasture and any mechanically harvested forage. So I know a lot of our audience tend to work in grain. So if you think about how much, like how quickly a grain crop will draw down a soil test, mechanically harvested forage will draw it down faster because you're taking virtually all of the green biomass Out of that field, even more than grain plus straw, because any of the water-soluble nutrients that were in that stem, a lot of that leaches out the root system as the plant dries down. So it's mechanically harvested hay, silage, haylage, that will take— that will draw down your soil test faster than a grain crop with straw. Pasture is kind of the other end of the spectrum because a lot of the nutrients are cycling in place within that field. So But the thing is, not all of them are. And this is, I think, where a lot of farmers get caught, is that there's a bit of a range of numbers out there from some ruminant nutrition studies. But basically, those animals are using somewhere between 10% and 35% of the minerals that they take in from the plants for their own life processes. The rest gets kicked out the back end as manure and urine. So most of the nutrients are cycling in place. But some of the nutrients are leaving as meat, milk, cull animals, weaned young stock, something you sold, right? Like, it's— some nutrients are leaving that field and that farm. So your drawdown is slower, but it's not zero. And I say this is where farmers often get caught, is they're not thinking about soil testing their pastures. They're not tracking that. So the fictional soil test that Peter Johnson was bringing forward for his thought experiment, I've seen those numbers in pasture fields regularly because no one's put any manure or other nutrients on those pastures for like 30 years. So it does happen. Yeah. Yeah, it's a similar process though. Ideally, we want to have moderate to good soil fertility in those pastures to keep those crops going to feed the livestock. So the approach to bringing those soil tests back up is very similar. The length of time it takes to draw the test down is very different. So I can see where when you're nutrient budgeting, if you've got a field you both hay and graze, that drawdown math is very different on that cut that is actually a grazing event. Right. Yeah, I like to complicate things, Christine. It's really important to keep people guessing. Keeps life interesting. Yeah, it really does. Okay. Yes, it does. It totally does. Okay. Now, Pete also mentioned that that photo, Cedric, that you shared, we've got some blooms there. He seems to think that that's, you know, quite mature. I disagree, but I have sheep, and depending on what stage of animal you're feeding, it may not be that advanced at all. Or that's true, if you're dairy and you're going for peak milk out of that, that might be a little past where you want it. But it does depend on what you're actually going for. But I do think You know, we have to recognise that every time we cut that, depending on what stage it's at and whether or not we feed it, that helps to determine whether or not it springs back, comes back and is productive, or if we've just hastened its demise is the way we sort of have to balance that, right? Okay, so one of the things I wanted to talk about as well is sulphur, and this came up. Pete and I talked about this. Yeah. today on the radio show. Christine, are you seeing an increasing need for sulphur in some of these forage stands, alfalfa otherwise, and have you seen an increased need for it or response to it? I think broadly, yes. People are often surprised to learn that alfalfa needs more sulphur than canola because we all think of canola as being like the sulphur crop, right? But yeah, alfalfa actually needs more because sulphur is a key component of protein. So when legumes are trying to build that much protein, they need sulphur to do it. They, they're fixing their own nitrogen, but they still need sulphur to do it. And yeah, you know, none of us have heard anything about acid rain in a really long time because as a society, we've done a great job of cleaning up some of that air pollution. That's a good news storey. But what it means for us in agriculture is now we have to think about sulphur a little bit. I still think this is a good news storey. Manure also has sulphur in it, guys. So like, don't think you necessarily have to buy it. You might have it. It's just about using it strategically. So, um, yeah, overall I think we are seeing more responses to sulphur. It— yeah, it's, um, it's, it's probably the most common deficiency that I see in alfalfa because— Okay. It's rare that It doesn't nodulate well, particularly on soils that have a fairly neutral pH, which is a lot of agricultural ground in Ontario. Mark brought up the pH adjustment discussion as well. Cedric, we'll start with sulphur though first. Are you seeing more need for sulphur or sulphur being included in recommendations when it comes to fertility? Oh yeah, for certain. And we're seeing a lot of use of ammonium sulphate down in New Brunswick, my neck of the woods. Works well with spuds, you know, they're mixing it with calcium ammonium nitrate and it's a safe source and a source of sulphur too. So that all makes sense. I want to jump back though just a little bit because we were talking about fertility on pastures and one thing that I'm a big fan of is feeding out on pasture, right? So we've been bale grazing for, you know, a decade and a half now. I find that's just such a tremendous way to maximise nutrient use efficiency, feeding the bales, you know, they eat where the manure is coming out. And yes, there's significant impact there, but when it comes again, when looking at those, the low fertility rates on those pastures, you know, we're doing a job on a defined area and you're really loading the soil nutrient bank account for a decade. Right, so being strategic in how we're using those nutrients that come with the bales and placing them out there, I think, is a really, really effective way to get that job done, especially if you're trying to minimise labour for spreading manure. And I will— I should have jumped in earlier, and I'm now getting to understand how this game works. Peter is absolutely right, that alfalfa was mature, but I was fencing in Newfoundland 2 weeks ago, I was at CBIC last week, and it should have been down. Yeah. But those are custom bales that are going to a stocker grower who overwinters, and so he likes that kind of alfalfa. So it's ready-made for the programme. There you go. I would also like it, Cedric, just so you know, because I need to feed dry ewes over the winter and it would be candy for them. For a dairy cow, not so much milk in it, but it's all about matching stage, whether it's hay to the animal or Turning animals out in the right pasture, same thing. Okay, and yes, Cedric, you will catch on. There's a lot that happens in the comments. You really have to try and keep up. Yeah, you got it. You got to be— it's true. Okay, so Pete wants to know about strategy for sulphur. So Pete says that he's seeing it, so some deficiencies on dairy farms that have manure in rotation. And as you said, alfalfa is a huge sulphur user. So when do you think that sulphur should go on potentially? What are our windows? I'm gonna back up a step because he's talking about the whole strategy. So there are labs that will give you a sulphur soil test number. Unlike some of those other nutrients, in Ontario we don't have an accredited sulphur test. So that— not yet. I know there are researchers working on it, but we don't have one yet. So actually, your better indicator, if you Really want to cheque, like, how deficient is this, is a tissue test. So top 6 inches, I believe, at early bud stage. And if it's below 0.22%, that's a deficient alfalfa plant. So that would be your, that would be your metric if you were looking for a way to measure that. In terms of source and timing, sulphur is made plant available, like Cedric said, elemental is not available right away. It's like a slow release. It's the sulphate forms that are plant available immediately. So because it's microbes that are turning other forms of sulphur into sulphate, they need a certain amount of heat to actually get going in the spring. So that early springtime is actually when we're most likely to see a sulphur deficiency because the microbes just aren't up and going yet. The soil is too cold. So around green-up is a good time to hit it with some sulphate. I don't care what form of sulphate, but a sulphate fertiliser would be readily available. The plant can get it by the time that's been used up. Hopefully soil bugs are up and at it and are doing their thing. Yeah, I mentioned elemental in the fall because of the cost savings of application and because it's usually cheaper than a sulphate, but it's not going to be necessarily available first thing in the spring. So that's kind of some things to consider and how you might approach it because yeah, manure is a great source of nutrients, but like I said earlier, it's not a balanced source of nutrients. That's right. So it's often that we're filling gaps somewhere. Once we've got all the manure out of storage, we get it on the field, there's probably a gap somewhere. And that's really where an agronomist is needed to say, hey, okay, here's how we fill those gaps cost-effectively to make sure this whole system is working. Well, and That's one of the key points too, is that, you know, an elemental sulphur in the fall or something like that might be a really good part of like a long-term, we're planning for this, as opposed to a, we're seeing an issue, we need to address it, where your sulphate comes in right away. Okay, we are rapidly running out of time, which I knew that we would, but I want to get to Darren's question just quickly. You mentioned taking a cut post-dormancy. Which would be similar to his question is, can you graze alfalfa in the fall after a killing frost without hurting the stand? So Cedric, when you— so it's, you're taking it as a cut, maybe not necessarily grazing it, but how do you manage that either post-frost or dormant stand differently? Do you hurt it at all? Well, certainly if I was going to graze it, it would have to be controlled, and you're going to really have to manage the animal impact on those grounds. So it's easy after that first killing frost, right, we give it a week or so, cross with the mower, I'll lay everything in 4-foot swath, mow, bale, pickup, out. If you're going to graze it, certainly your cross wires, make sure you've got small paddocks, move them in, move them out, probably not going to want to be in the paddock for more than a day or 2 max, right, and keep them moving nice and tight. And really in that case you've got to be careful too of the weather, Right, you get a wet stretch in there and that animal impact, you can, you can do a fair amount of damage in a hurry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing I would add is a bit of a bloat risk. I think that's why Cedric said wait a week at least after that frost is that killing frost does rupture some of those plant cells, especially in the leaves, which are the best bit. So yeah, really, you know, all your best practises for bloat management. So So turn them out full, move them when the crop is dry, often in the afternoon. You might want to supplement with like throw a couple of bales of dry hay out there, something that's got some fibre in them just to help them manage and self-regulate a little bit. So yeah, all of your best practises for preventing bloat are important for grazing alfalfa after killing frost. And then yeah, watching out for any kind of pugging damage, any wet weather, because you can do a number on those grounds. I love the word pugging. Also, it's like hugging but worse. But also, it'd be great if you plan to take a stand out in the spring, great way to knock it back in the fall if you really want to, is you could hammer it in the fall and don't let it go dormant, take it out in the spring if you really wanted to. But, you know, that's just if you've got nothing better to do. Okay, yeah. Also works for for shoring up pastures that are— maybe you're looking to get a little legume content into, and maybe we're going to frost seed, right? Put the drill out there, get over with the buggy. A little heavier graze in the fall opens that up, gets ready for spring. Yeah, okay. Look at us using animals for things we need to get done. It's like they're useful, you guys. We're going to convert all these agronomists. Okay, uh, Producer Jay, I'm sorry, we're running out of time. I haven't used either clip. He's going to be so angry with me, but let's go to our last read of the night and then we're going to talk about how teamwork makes the dream work after this read. Thanks to our show sponsors, the Canola School, Profitable Practises, and Wheat Pete's Word. Each Wednesday, Peter Wheat Pete Johnson answers your top agronomy questions in this dynamic podcast covering soil health, cover crops, planting, herbicides, and much, much more. Have a question? Leave him a message at 1-888-746-3311, send him a tweet @WheatPete, or email him at pjohnson@realagriculture.com. Just want to note that Pete says that Mark's never fed sheep because they will leave all the coarse stuff in the feeder. Pete, Your problem is you're feeding them in a feeder. You feed them outside on the hay fields and/or pastures, and then whatever they leave behind is just fodder for next year's microbes and it just cycles. So there you go. That's just showing you've got to get out of the barn, Pete. Get out of the barn. Okay, Christine, let's go to— or Jay, let's go to slide 3 of Christine's, although we should probably touch on slide 1 at one point as well. But tell me, Christine, about the importance of everybody being on the same page when we're trying to address what are we trying to achieve here with our forages and what's the best course of action on the agronomy side. Why does it matter that everybody actually maybe stands on the tailgate together to have this conversation versus having them separately? Absolutely, and it matters because you've got 3 different experts that are experts in separate fields. So the agronomist understands crop production, right? Yield potential, crop rotation, pest management, soil types, testing, like all that stuff. And I don't have to explain what agronomists know to this audience. The show is literally called The Agronomist. It is. But the nutritionists, the livestock nutritionists are experts in ingredients. So I always tell people that Forage quality, like what they go, well, what's good forage quality? And I ask, well, what animal are you feeding it to? And I think some of our conversation earlier hinted at that where Cedric's alfalfa is, yeah, a little too far gone for lactating dairy cows, but it's great feed for a lot of other types of animals. So the nutritionist knows what kind of quality those animals need. They're used to working with ingredients and they're the ones that are going to be making a balanced diet for these animals with whatever is grown on the farm. The farmer is also an expert. They understand their farm's goals, their past challenges, their production system. They know their equipment. They understand what labour capacity they have or limitations. Like, they know the farm and some of its history that the other 2 experts may not know. So by bringing all 3 of these people around the same kitchen table or on the same tailgate, it's a lot more constructive to get a forage crop plan done because we'll know how much of each crop we need in terms of ingredients based on yield potential where you are. And the farmers spend a lot less time playing broken telephone going, okay, well, the agronomist said one thing and the nutritionist said something else. Who do I listen to in this situation? If you've got both, if you've got all of them together, they can understand each other's point of view because they can ask questions of each other. Well, the agronomist might want one thing and the nutritionist wants another. They can work that out so that they agree on a plan before they all go their separate ways. So it's efficient, it's effective. I wish we did it more in this industry, but if you are at all in a position to help get all 3 of these people at the same meeting, it's worth it. Please do. I feel like it just takes care of exactly that, of the game of telephone of like, well, my nutritionist said I need this. Or my agronomist said I have to do this, and yeah, you can just hammer that out right there and find either the middle ground or why one choice, you know, is better than the other, etc. Cedric, I know you also love Venn diagrams, so your thoughts on this? How important is it to get everybody to the same table necessarily? Yeah, and as in most things, I'm well aligned with Christine on this. I recall starting with new clients and the first thing we do is, what is your cropping system and how does it go? And I think sometimes you can get caught in that status quo and say, well, that's the way it needs to be, that's where we need to go. But when you stop and come back, and I would ask nutritionists, what is your dream ration here? What is your dream ration, right? Because we often like, ah yeah, I want to make 20% alfalfa, A lot of nutritionists, in my experience down here, would say, listen, 20 is hard for me to balance. I can do better with a 16 to 18. It will do a good job on the corn silage. And Christine hit the nail on the head. What is the actual yield of corn silage, which is going to tell me what I need for acres? Because we got a lot of growers that are fertilising for down in my neck of the woods, 16 to 18 tonne per acre, but the actual yield is somewhere probably closer to 12 to 14, right? So now we're shorting ourselves on alfalfa, right, because we're overestimating. Now we're overfertilizing because we're shooting for an unrealistic yield goal, right? So it really brings things into perspective. I think it's important in, in this context for everybody to just be honest. Right. and real, right, and come to the table with what you have and really make a solid plan because in some cases if you're overproducing on either your stored forage or your corn silage, maybe there's an opportunity to put 50 acres of soybeans in the mix and use some Roundup Ready genetics to clean up some weeds and make the systems flow, right, but until you come down and take a look objectively at that land base and start to set some clear agronomic and farm management goals, These questions or these conversations can be quite challenging. Now, I do want to talk about pH. It's been mentioned a couple times, and pH of course does matter. It matters for all sorts of different reasons. Producer Jay, let's go to Cedric's, I think it's slide 7, I think it's the last 3, yeah, 7, 8, 9, I think are the ones. What are we looking at here? Walk us through what we're trying to manage here. Yes, and I'm so glad it came up. I mean, it is corn fundamental, getting that pH up. This is 3 sets of photos I took today, one dairy and one on my beef, and this is actually in a potato rotation. I could see throughout the entire season, and this is only going to be in for one year, it's a rotation crop, My neighbour actually harvests it, I help him harvest it. You can see these carve-outs within the field and you might say, oh, those are low spots, drownouts, but they're not, right? And that was the one that gave it away to me. What I'm surmising here is this is actually a low pH zone within the field and they were oblong and they were throughout this entire, there's probably 50 acres within this block split up by tarps. I put this up here, Lyndsey, To highlight the importance for understanding soil variability, right? Not every acre is built the same, as we know, and once if we get out and start to do a good job at grid sampling these fields, understanding yield zones, and using variable rate technology, it's absolutely incredible What we've seen down this neck of the woods, and I'm sure it's everywhere we go, when we start to use that variable rate technology to its full extent and normalise whether or not it's potash or phosphorus or pH, productivity that we see on these lands is staggering. And in most cases, and I think Pete had alluded to this earlier about the guy or gal that was going to put 800 pounds of potash down. He did talk about variable rating by soil zone, right? So 800 here, 0 here, it all normalises, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, next slide, Jay. I think so, this is the same. So looking at the same setup here, that's what you figure is going on here, is it's the pH difference. Can you walk us through what the rotation is with potatoes in the, like, so it's an annual forage that goes in and you take it for forage? Yeah, this is for a large corporate in here in the Carleton County area in New Brunswick. So potatoes, seed and table for this particular operator, then they'll follow with a crop of oats and then they underseed it to alfalfa. It's fairly new that they've actually put alfalfa in the system, and there have been some encouraging notes on moving from a clover-based product to an alfalfa-based product, largely because of clover being such a host for Verticillium wilt, and that stimulates the early die complex in potatoes. So, you know, getting out to alfalfa. The other thing it's doing, this alfalfa, like the regrowth on this is is heads and shoulders above what we used to see in some of the red clover crops, largely because it was common too, right? So this is just a really nice alfalfa crop. Okay, and last slide, Jay, of this grouping because this is a bit closer up to look at. So what are we looking at here? This is regrowth, this is about 10 days, and again, I remember working with the father-in-law way back when we had a seed house and there was a lot of common triple mix product, which would be red clover, alsike, and timothy down this country. I said, listen, let's elevate ourselves here, guys. Let's get in, if it's only going to be in for a year or 2, let's get something that's going to grow back for us and maybe take 3, maybe take 4 cuts. Right. and work hard at it. But this struck me this morning of just how vigorous this is growing. Obviously, Christine, it's quite thin, so it's not the kind of— this would be a replacement stand, but this is only in for one year, right? So plant it right, feed it right, hit it hard. Yep, okay, so it's not, Christine, I've heard today, maybe yesterday, I heard about floor sweeping blends. Have you heard about these? Anyway, I think, I think that's what Cedric's referring to is these— Don't do that. Don't do the floor sweeping blend. Yeah, I've heard that Timothy, Alsike, red clover mix called tar in Northern Ontario. You'll hear growers say, yeah, just put some tar on it. And if you don't know what they're talking about, that sounds like they can't farm that anymore. Terrible. Yeah, exactly. It's not what you think, everybody. Okay, one, Christine, I'll go to you. Just one mention, because this comes up when we talk about forages, is this connection of potassium and milk fever and sort of that interplay that we sometimes have to worry about. What do we have to think about on that? Do you want to go to the slide? It's slide 1. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I put that slide first because I know that these conversations are always They're everywhere, Christine. Okay. Everywhere. But yeah, I put this slide first because it kind of was an example that would feed into the Purdue plots photo. Basically, for those of you who work with dairy clients, many of them have a nutritionist that have them scared. Absolutely, absolutely scared of milk fever. And it is serious. I don't want to make light of that. If it's not caught early and treated correctly, cows can die. So it is serious. And basically dairy cows' metabolisms, they're, they're doing incredible things, but they're on a knife's edge. So if they have too much K in their diet leading up to giving birth, they can have a metabolic crash is essentially what happens. Mm-hmm. So many dairy producers are reluctant to apply apply enough potassium to their forage crops because of luxury consumption. So if there's excess potassium in the soil, plants will take up more than the bare minimum that they need. Alfalfa gets the worst rap for this. It's not a unique to alfalfa thing. At the same stage of maturity, grasses and legumes can take up the same amount of K. I think the exception is corn silage. We may need a corn agronomist to confirm this, but I've never seen I haven't been able to find a reference to luxury consumption in corn. It's a very large grass. I don't know. It is. It's a very large subtropical grass that we've applied immense breeding pressure to. There are a few things to keep in mind, like the potassium concentration declines as plants mature. You can use that to your advantage when making dry cow hay. Potassium will also leach out of rained-on Forage. So if you cut the crop and it rains on it, that has leached out some K. It has also leached out some sugars. It may accelerate spoiling. So it's not like a best practise. Right. But there's less potassium in it. Um, and you know, as, as part of that broader crop plan, as part of that conversation with the nutritionist, I've— my, my opinion is the best, uh, strategy is designate a field for dry cow hay. Because you can mine the potassium out of it. You can sacrifice some of that persistence and yield, and nobody's feelings are hurt. And then fertilise the rest of the farm to have that persistence and yield that you actually need. Because having low-K forage everywhere just in case we happen to feed that lot of hay to a dry cow is crazy and is a headache for everybody. So, um, that was, that was why I brought that. Interesting. It was more supposed to be like a conversation starter in case I don't know if Cedric and I have ever been shy or quiet, but yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, um, no, I think it is a good point. Yeah, Cedric, go ahead. Well, and it feeds well into what we're chatting about in the last slide with, with having strategic goals, right, and having that field set aside specifically for those dry cows so everybody can sleep at night. Because I agree, the last thing you want to do is say, well, I got a short on my potassium on my farm and, and And all of a sudden now you've got, you know, massive winterkill in your alfalfa and it's not working, and now it's the alfalfa's fault, or need more tile drainage. Well, no, we just need to manage our potassium. So let's just be strategic on how we're growing this feed. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and again, that also exactly that speaks to the matching the forage we have to the animal class or production Part of the production cycle, takes some planning, and away you go. So there you go, agronomists, forage people, and livestock people, think about these things too. Anyway, we also have very complicated it depends things, so there you go. We do. Okay, we do. All right, okay, we are out of time. This has been fantastic. We did— Kristine, 10 points for getting the word pugging in here. Cedric wins for the most Photos and bark ash. Never heard of that before, so that's a good 10 points. So there you go. We did not, though, come up with a master's project, so if anybody has any ideas, that's also one of the things I like to do on the show is come up with master's projects or PhD projects for people. So just drop them in the chat and then we'll assign those later. Don't worry if you, if you put them in the chat, you don't have to do it. We'll find somebody else. Okay, next week we are going to talk about soil biology and specifically biological products. It's very warm in here and my fan is just doing ridiculous things to my hair and I love it. Isn't that great? I thought it was like a Maybelline commercial. Yeah, it's like very soap opera, very soap opera, and I don't know because it wasn't doing this before, so I must have moved. Anyway, okay, we'll end it there. We'll see everybody next week. Thank you, Cedric. Thank you, Christine. Have a great night, everybody. Thanks for the opportunity. See you guys. Our sponsors tonight are Wheat Pete's Word, the Canola School, and Profitable Practises. Profitable Practises on Real Agriculture is a video series featuring Canadian producers who are adopting Farm Practises to have a positive impact on profit, people, and the planet. Profitable Practises is made possible by support from Farm Credit Canada and RBC Royal Bank. Find out more at RealAgriculture.com/profitable-practices. Hello everyone. Welcome to The Agronomist. I am your host, Hi, I'm Lyndsey Smith. Thank you so much for joining us here. A few minutes late, but we made it. There's a lot going on behind the scenes, everybody. Thanks everybody for letting us know where you're joining from, what the crop looks like where you are, and of course, as we go through tonight's conversation, let us know if you've got any questions. Ask early, ask often. And if you collect CEU credits, make sure that you head on over to RealAgriculture.com/agronomist Tomorrow, let us know you took in the show and we will get you signed up for those as well. And while you're there, sign up for our free e-newsletter. It goes out every Wednesday. It has the most current episode and of course some related storeys that go with it as well. All right, we are into the— I guess now we can say on the back half of August. And this is, I know, a prime time to fertilise forages. It is possible, you guys, we can fertilise them, and that's what we're going to talk about tonight, and so I'm so excited to have this conversation. Bringing in tonight's guests, we've got Cedric McLeod of McLeod Agronomics and of course the Canadian Forage and Grasslands Association out of New Brunswick, and Christine O'Reilly with OMAFRA, our grazing and forage specialist. Okay, OMAFRA. Welcome here, Cedric and Christine. Thanks for having us. It was a pleasure to be with you, Lyndsey. All right. Okay, so I am quite excited about tonight's topic because we get to spend a whole hour geeking out about forages, and that makes me incredibly happy. But before we get going on that, Cedric, I don't know if you've been on the show in a while. Would you like to introduce yourselves to the peeps watching along? I think, Lyndsey, this is probably the first time I've actually been on the show. I think so. It might be. It is a pleasure. And I almost think that maybe this is rolling on from our time together in Halifax at the FTP meetings, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, it is true. So I've been running McLeod Agronomics since about 2003, so a little over 2 decades. It's taken me down a number of different paths. I'm a soil scientist by training, so that's soil fertility and soil health is kind of the foundation of my Agronomy practise. And I think as we were talking earlier about, I think, some of the ideas that Christine is going to share, been working on this concept of a forage data management system that encompasses lots of different facets of forage production, but it comes right down to cost of production and being able to make really solid management decisions based on the numbers, not on feeling or thought or Or history or even anecdote. So that's been, that's been kind of my life's passion. And, and of course, a lot of the things we're doing with, with the CFJA, Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, are really hinged to obviously soil carbon, biodiversity, those sorts of things on the landscape. But it all comes back to advanced forage productivity and enhanced post-production, reduced post-production, and/or overall increase profitability on the farm. So that's where I come from, and I guess I do manage a couple 400 acres down here in New Brunswick with my wife and son Caelan, grass-fed beef operation, and do a little annual cropping for seed production. So thanks for making time because A, it's quite late where you are, and B, you're a busy man. So there you go. It's also late for Christine and I, Christine O'Reilly, What is keeping you busy right now, especially as we look to what we could be doing with our forages right now in the field? Yeah, summer field projects on the research side are sort of winding down, especially because university students are going back to school. We rely on them. But no, in terms of what's timely right now, Forages is the crop that never ends, and kind of what we do from now to the end of the growing season really sets up those perennial crops and overwintering crops for next year. So this is the start of the forage production year in a lot of ways, and I think your topic tonight is absolutely perfect because getting the right fertility on now or within the next month-ish, depending on where in the country you are, That's often where you can get the most bang for your buck on some of those nutrients, and then you might as well get the rest out there to save a pass across the field. Okay, so let's start there perhaps. Why is now such a critical time to feed some of these forages, Christine? Why is it— what is it about this time of year that matters? Those plants are starting to harden off for winter, so they're changing how, um, how water happens inside the plant. So they're trying to change some of those processes so that you don't have freeze-thaw cycles actually rupturing plant cells. That would kill the plant. Right. And potassium is actually a major nutrient involved in water regulation. So K applications in late summer and early fall is the best bang for your buck to get it on because that's right before the crop needs it to harden off for winter. So it's really potassium, that's the big one for this late summer, early fall window. But since that crop is growing the rest of the growing season and we don't always have a lot of opportunities to get nutrients out on a perennial crop, if you're going to make the pass to put on the potash, you might as well put phosphorus with it, potentially some elemental sulphur with it depending on where you are and what the crop needs, that this is the best time of year to do it for a lot of those nutrients. Cedric, if now is a great time because we have to think about winter survivability, etc., when is the second best time to be adding some nutrients back to our forage systems? Well, I guess some of that will hinge on soil condition, but obviously early in the spring, you know, if you're going to get a touch of Nitrogen out there to get things woken up, obviously the earlier the better. To Christine's point, if you haven't had a chance to put on some replacement phosphorus, obviously you're going to touch that in with the nitrogen. I agree 100%, let's get that potassium on in the fall wherever possible, and if you're rolling across the field and you got to put phosphorus on anyway, get it done. Then really when it comes, when you're coming into spring season, you've got other options besides elemental because you can use ammonium sulphate or some of those more soluble sulphur products which would put it at risk if you're putting it down in the fall. Depending on your full programme, either early in the spring or after that first cut, if you can't, to keep it pushing through. But really it depends I think on what you're set up for equipment. I personally do a lot of my spreading in the summer after that first cut. We use a lot of bark ash product down here, and I'll probably talk about that a little bit later on, but, you know, heavy spreaders so soils are in good condition that way, so we don't have to worry about compaction. And that, I think, that certainly, Christine, for maybe the Ontario example, I don't think, Cedric, I've ever heard of bark ash, so this is exciting. I love learning new things. But we often get that question after like first cut, right, Kristine, with manure or something like that, or second cut. When is the best time? Go ahead, Kristine. Yeah, absolutely. Manure applications, sometimes those get fit in immediately after cut because you've got to get that storage empty. That's absolutely part of it. I guess the other timing piece would be nitrogen on grassy fields. So if you're trying to get a perennial grassy stand to tiller, you want that in early fall. If you're just looking for a bigger first cut, early spring. So the timing, because it'll encourage tillering early in the fall, but once you get into the spring, it's not going to get those plants tillering as much. So it's not going to fill in gaps, say if you had a very dry year and the stand thinned. Right. The spring is just going to make the plants you do have bigger So nitrogen timing changes a little bit how grass responds to that. So Christine, on that, if you're going to do a split, what kind of a percentage split do you think you'd go for in the fall versus spring? Obviously we want to minimise, you know, carryover and make sure it's assimilated into the plant. So how would you split that? Yeah, I guess I am still hesitant to suggest more than that, like 50 to 75 pounds an acre of actual N. If you get above 75, we might run into problems with nitrate accumulation in the plant. So in the spring, I'd be very wary of excessively high rates. In the fall, I also wouldn't want to put on excessively high rates because if the plant doesn't use it all, then we're leaching it out. Yeah, you lost it. Yeah. Yeah. Like if, if you look at temperate climates where they really manage grass aggressively, they'll put on, you know, that 50 to 75 pounds an acre after every cut and take 6 cuts. So like ryegrass in Ireland, it's fertilised the way we fertilise corn in Ontario. Like it's wild how much nitrogen they put on that crop. We don't have the length of the growing season. Ryegrass is exceptionally hungry. So dialling that back a little bit, but still keeping in mind, you know, this is a grass. It needs nitrogen, especially if it's not grown in conjunction with a lot of legumes. So yeah, I would say probably no more than 75 pounds of actual N at one time, but it can be fertilised after every cut, theoretically. Okay. Peter Wheat Pete Johnson, he's a first-time caller. No, I'm just kidding. He says, how much P or K can I put on in the fall? Is there an upper limit? Let's say you've got a poor soil test of 10-P and 80-K. How heavy can we go without concern? Christine, I'll maybe go to you on this one. We do have some slides about potassium and some of these other questions about how much is too much. Yeah, and Cedric may have a different answer to this. I don't have specific concerns about burning a crop as long as it's not a seedling. Like an establishment year crop. Yeah. Yeah, at least in Ontario, the recommendations are based on soil test. So the lower that soil test, the higher the amount of nutrients we suggest gets applied. There may be some limitations in terms of we can't incorporate that material on a perennial stand that's already established. So I think it'll come more to logistical concerns rather than crop. safety concerns, but I'll let Cedric weigh in on that. Yeah, no, I agree. And I mean, especially on phosphorus, you know, I'm always leery about putting too much phosphorus out in the fall, right? Overland flow, you know, trying to keep the phosphorus on the landscape as we can. But what I typically do with my nutrient management clients is obviously come back to the soil test, and quite often, believe it or not, we're running low in potash or below optimal levels. So what I try and do is make sure obviously we're getting enough to cover off that crop from a removals perspective and then maybe do like a 2 to 3 year build on soil test levels to get it there. A lot of it is pocketbook. Sometimes, you know, you get behind the 8 ball, like we got to build that potassium, like, I just can't even begin to afford it. I'm like, okay, let's make sure again, we're keeping up with removals and we're going to build it over time. You know, caveat to that, I think, and this has unfortunately played out with a lot of clients. I said, listen, guys, gals, like this product is only going to get more expensive. Right. So the longer you wait to build to optimal levels so that you can just move to crop removal, the more expensive it's going to be, and we're seeing that now with, with strayed and that phosphorus, sulphur, I mean, just blowing my mind, right? So the time to get it up to spec is certainly sooner than later. So, and this also speaks to why we would want to do this, and there's more reasons than just necessarily yield. We mentioned this time of year we're talking about persistence, so we're talking about overwintering. We want to make sure that we've got those plants into the spring, but persistence to me, Christine, is also about like your overall productivity and overall cost of production. Like in my mind, if to Cedric's point, if I make sure that I don't let those levels get drawn down too low, I know that that stand should should stick around for those 10 cuts or 12 cuts or whatever I'm going to take out of it for that many years. And Kristine, you've got a couple slides on this, or one slide, I think it's slide 2, talking about balanced fertility that I think would be a good point to sort of talk about. And so on this persistence piece, on this balanced piece, what does balanced nutrition really mean for a forage? Yeah, so It's, um, when you, when you think about how the, like, the ratios of different nutrients that plants put in their tissue, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium is roughly a 3-1-3. Now this trial was done in Purdue. They were looking at alfalfa. So because it's a legume, we're not worried about the nitrogen. We're assuming everything nodulated fine. It's taking care of that itself. So they were just looking at phosphate and potash. Okay. And if you look at Treatment A in the bottom left and Treatment C in the bottom right, those were treatments where they applied phosphate but not potash. And as you can see, those plots are mostly dandelions. Mm-hmm. So what sometimes happens when that fertiliser budget is limited, and if, you know, having manure around always helps, like manure is a fantastic source of crop nutrients and most livestock farms have it. But it's not balanced either, right? Because the livestock have taken some of the nutrients for their own life purposes, so it's not balanced. And what happens is if we have a really unbalanced— in terms of if it's really unbalanced in terms of what's available, we're not seeing that same persistence. Now, this may also come back a bit to the fact that, like we talked about, K is super important for that overwintering. And that water regulation. But I think it's really interesting that even the treatment D, so where they have still more phosphate than potash, right, it's 150 pounds an acre phosphate and 100 pounds of potash, D still looks all right. It might not be the absolute tallest plot in this photo, but it made it through even though that ratio is a bit out of whack. But you need both because sometimes when the budget's tight, it's tempting to just do one. My suggestion might be pick a field and do it right rather than pick a nutrient and do it everywhere, just as a way to make the budget go a little further and still get that benefit in that stand. So that, and that's a really good point of, I like how you phrase that, of the balance of these, right, of the nutrients that work together. If the budget does not allow to potentially do every field Better to do both nutrients, you know, on the fields you can versus going all out on just phosphorus and forgetting about the potassium or vice versa. Darren also notes, because Pete says, all right, you know, would 800 pounds to get the potash where we need it be okay? Um, Pete, I'm going to say no one in their right mind is going to spend that kind of money because let's also remember these are forages. We're having a hard enough time getting people to spend $20, let alone that many dollars. So yes, there's an agronomic limit, but there is also a physical limit, and there is more importantly an economic limit. So yes, but Cedric, on that point, better to think about balance versus volume, yes or no? Well, I think it depends. I'm thinking about a farm that I worked on in Newfoundland, and I don't know, we had 52 fields, and Looking through the soil test, it was all over the place. If you know the history of Newfoundland, last 2 decades they've pushed a lot of bush, they got lime subsidy programmes, they got great programmes to get the soils up and going, but we had new farms, old farms all over the place. We started profiling and we were doing bales and so we started counting bales and we had weights and we started to stack it all up and we said, okay, Which farms are pushing close to 10 and which are pushing close to 3. This is bales per acre, right? Right. And so on the 10s, we were able to come with a base level of annual fertility including the manure, agreed 100% with Christine. I mean, use that resource to its maximum potential off the hop, but where we started to focus was in those 5 bale an acre farms. Because we could, through some strategic investment, we could get them working up. And as long as we didn't let that first launch of farms go down, the whole kind of the rising tide floats all boats. And once we had those middles done, and then we moved along. And I think that was a really effective way for us to make an investment in that production, but also time from the grower perspective. Right. So I think this is where, Christine, where I don't want to steal the thunder, but she's going to talk about how we all work together to build strategies on how to maximise forage output across an entire land base is so, so critical. Pete is telling me that there are growers who are willing to apply 800 pounds of potash if needed, and I'm going to say, would they like to adopt me? Because I don't have those kind of dollars. Now he does. I'll make one more point because I know Pete's really stuck on this thought exercise. Yes. The thing he might be forgetting is we don't have— in most places, we don't have just one opportunity to apply fertility, whether it's manure or purchased fertiliser, to a forage crop. In many places, this is a multi-harvest crop and we got multiple years to do it. So it's, it's not like growing wheat where you get like a pre-plant kind of a timing and then early spring you're done. That's it. the crop is over. We have more than one window to apply and so you could split that up as well. We even have opportunities to add species back. We do. Guys, okay, sorry, sorry, go ahead. Well, and to Pete's point, right, let's do the math. He obviously wants to get in on this, right? So 800 pounds of potash at 60% gives you 480 pounds of K2O per acre, right? And we're going to remove, Christine, right, back me up here, 150 to 200 pounds In an alfalfa crop. So if you're transitioning from a corn crop or you're coming out of maybe soybeans, right, so you're deficient and you want to put one shot of potash down while you work, maybe you work that ground and get your alfalfa established, you got 3 years worth of supply there, right, and you might come out, keep coming over the top with a little bit more, but it does make sense from that perspective to make sure that that soil nutrient bank account is full. Yeah, okay, Producer Jay, and there's some great stuff. Mark weighs in here that ROI is the first thing a person needs to consider when growing anything. Forages aren't— okay, I would argue though, Mark, people have forgotten that when it comes to forages because we treat them like they are just supposed to perform regardless. We put them in the ground, maybe we feed them every once in a while a bit of manure, but I'm guilty of this too, is that, you know, some years, they look great and I did very little and I think, could we do this all the time? No, the answer is no, you have to feed them, they also need nutrients. Okay, let's just pause for just a moment. Producer Jay, let's go to our second read of the night and then we'll come back to our conversation. Our sponsors tonight are Profitable Practises, Wheat Pete's Word, and the Canola School. From pre-seeding, seeder setup and cheques, to pest insect identification and advice on nutrient management decisions, to tips on determining swath timing, RealAgriculture's Canola School covers every facet of the canola growing season. The Canola School is made possible through sponsorship by BASF Canada and InVigor hybrid canola. Learn more at canolaschool.com. What a jam. Okay, Mark asked about fertility onto pastures. We can talk about that in a minute. And Cedric's got some great photos I want to go through as well. But Jason Vogt asked, what would your fertiliser strategy be if you have forage on sand versus heavy clay? So where does soil type weigh in on this? Christine, do you want to go first, or Cedric, do you want to go first? Pretty simply, you got to be able to hold on to it. Okay, yeah. Right, when it comes down to sand. And on the other side, I'm thinking about Red River Valley, right, and its ability to hold on to phosphorus, right. We know there's potassium supplies there, but yeah, I think it's critical in those sandy soils thinking about that sulphur, obviously nitrogen, both soluble, boron, right, soluble, Another key one to hold on the alfalfa, right? So, you know, I tend to lean for most of those nutrients into spring application, but as Christine has rightly said, if we need potassium, you know, fall is a good chance to fire that on too. So the answer, as always, being safe, is it depends. It's our favourite here on this show. Christine? I mean, I was going to echo Cedric's comments on sulphur and boron, particularly on sand. Those are the soil textures that you tend to see those deficiencies show up first in alfalfa. A lot of our other species don't tell us as readily when they're deficient in anything besides nitrogen. So alfalfa is the one that'll actually show us deficiency symptoms. Everything else is just kind of look at the soil test, look at the tissue test, guess. Yes, I'll be brave enough to admit that I've seen potassium show up in pretty good shape. Oh wow, there you go. It doesn't make me happy, but I'm— No, but I mean, you've actually seen some symptoms. Yeah, that's unusual. Yeah, good. Yeah, so there you go. Okay, so one of the other things, and we will talk about sort of working together, But I think let's go to slide or photo, I think it's 4 of Cedric's. We've got some other ones first, but you've got a few groupings here of different situations that you want to talk through, and I think this one, by the third one, I think is where the bark ash comes in. Talk to me about this stuff, but what are we looking at? What are we assessing here? Yeah, so this is actually a farm that I farm, and this is the 7th year of this And so we seeded Shockwave alfalfa, targeted 60% alfalfa and the standard 40% grass, and this is the crop that just keeps on giving. And I guess, you know, when I went out this morning and took these photos to get ready, I like to kind of get myself in the headspace, and so when I looked at it again, And obviously it is getting tired and this landlord has decided that there's no more herbicide or fungicide to be sprayed on this operation. So I'm now in a bit of a corner because I obviously am not going to want to go in and put alfalfa directly back in here. So it's going to get cut and we're going to start rolling over with the no-till drill and introducing red clover because again, I don't want to be relying on nitrogen. But this has been serviced with a bark ash product and this comes out of the pulp and paper industry here in New Brunswick. It's a fantastic mix of phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, and a bunch of micros, but also calcium and magnesium. So it's actually a direct substitute for calcitic or dolomitic lime, plus it gives us the value of the PKNS and the micros. Yep. And so I've been spreading this on all my forage ground. A lot of the ground that I farm are the corners that potato growers don't want to farm, and so I don't want to work them, right? I've been a no-tiller for 20 years, it's not in the DNA, but the bark ash is so fine it works its way in, right? And, you know, the rain takes it in and the freeze-thaw takes it in, and so this is what we're able to manage with that product. But as you can see, right, starting to break up a little bit, we're starting to see some patches, it's thinning out, Christine, so I think the recommendation here would be to get this thickened back up with legume. Correct me if I'm wrong, and always looking for that magic number of 40%. I remember Dan Andersander stating, as long as we maintain a 40% legume content, then there shouldn't be an additional response to supplemental nitrogen on the grass crop. Right, okay. Good point there. This is where something like going back in with the red clover, something else to try and fill in some of those gaps. Um, but 7 years, Cedric, I think that's pretty, it's pretty good for 7 years. I've seen— How many cuts do you typically take per year? So I've been, this will be the second, uh, 3, 3 out of those 7 years I've taken 3 cuts. And so maybe, maybe a little unique. So we'll take first, second cut, put bark ash in after first cut, do a second cut as hay in August, and then what I've been doing is actually letting it grow till after first frost, and my third cutting comes, you know, after dormancy is set in. Okay, okay, that makes more sense. Yeah, that makes sense as to why it still has this much alfalfa in the stand, because that third cut is dormant. It's It doesn't feel it the same way. Yeah, right. Okay, can we go to the next photo, Jay? And I guess my question— so, well, that's quite lovely. Okay, Cedric, what are we looking at now? This is the next field over. Okay, yeah. And yeah, so again, I was marvelling a little bit at how Yeah, it's quite, it's quite nice. Yeah, okay. I will take, I will take this moment to identify that this seed was a certified Shockwave alfalfa with certified Barenbrug grasses that went along with it. Certified high-performance seed. Okay, so one of the things that we do, and so there's a question there about pasture, We don't— we have hay fields that are hay fields, but we also will take a cut by grazing. We will have— we'll run livestock across them and take third cut or whatever it might be as grazing. Christine, when I try to work that into the idea of how that works in the math for the nutrient addition and removal, it gets a little more complicated. Is there a Is there a rule of thumb of how much is actually removed if we're taking a cut but it's grazed off? Yeah. So the soil test drawdown is really different between pasture and any mechanically harvested forage. So I know a lot of our audience tend to work in grain. So if you think about how much, like how quickly a grain crop will draw down a soil test, mechanically harvested forage will draw it down faster. Because you were taking virtually all of the green biomass out of that field, even more than grain plus straw, because any of the water-soluble nutrients that were in that stem, a lot of that leaches out the root system as a plant dries down. So it's mechanically harvested, so hay, silage, haylage, that will take— that will draw down your soil test faster than a grain crop with straw. Pasture is kind of the other end of the spectrum because a lot of the nutrients are cycling in place within that field. So, but the thing is, not all of them are. And this is, I think, where a lot of farmers get caught, is that there's a bit of a range of numbers out there from some ruminant nutrition studies. But basically, those animals are using somewhere between 10 and 35% of the minerals that they take in from the plants for their own life processes. The rest gets kicked out the back end as manure and urine. So most of the nutrients are cycling in place, but some of the nutrients are leaving as meat, milk, cull animals, weaned young stock, something you sold, right? Like, it's— some nutrients are leaving that field and that farm. So your drawdown is slower, but it's not zero. And I say this is where farmers often get caught, is they're not thinking about soil testing their pastures. They're not tracking that. So, um, Yeah. the fictional soil test that Peter Johnson was bringing forward for his thought experiment. I've seen those numbers in pasture fields regularly because no one's put any manure or other nutrients on those pastures for like 30 years. So it does happen. Yeah, it's a similar process though. Ideally, we want to have moderate to good soil fertility in those pastures to keep those crops going to feed the livestock. So the The approach to bringing those soil tests back up is very similar. The length of time it takes to draw the test down is very different. So I can see where when you're nutrient budgeting, if you've got a field that you both hay and graze, that drawdown math is very different on that cut that is actually a grazing event. Right. Yeah. I like to complicate things, Kristine. It's really important to keep people guessing. Keeps life interesting. Yeah, it really does. Okay, yes, it does, it totally does. Okay, now Pete also mentioned, so the alfalfa, that photo, Cedric, that you shared, we've got some blooms there. He seems to think that that's, you know, quite mature. I disagree, but I have sheep, and depending on what stage of animal you're feeding, it may not be that advanced at all. Or that's true, if you're dairy and you're going for peak milk out of that, that might be a little past where you want it, but it does, it does depend on what you're actually going for. But I do think, you know, we have to recognise that every time we cut that, depending on what stage it's at and whether or not we feed it, that helps to determine whether or not it springs back, comes back and is productive, or if we've just hastened its demise is the way we sort of have to balance that, right? Okay. So one of the things I wanted to talk about as well is sulphur, and this came up. Pete and I talked about this today on the radio show. Christine, are you seeing an increasing need for sulphur in some of these forage stands, alfalfa otherwise, and have you seen an increased need for it or response to it? I think broadly, yes. People are often surprised to learn that alfalfa needs more sulphur than canola because we all think of canola as being like the sulphur crop, right? Yeah. But yeah, alfalfa actually needs more because sulphur is a key component of protein. So when legumes are trying to build that much protein, they need sulphur to do it. They're fixing their own nitrogen, but they still need sulphur to do it. And yeah, You know, none of us have heard anything about acid rain in a really long time because as a society, we've done a great job of cleaning up some of that air pollution. That's a good news storey. But what it means for us in agriculture is now we have to think about sulphur a little bit. I still think this is a good news storey. Manure also has sulphur in it, guys. So like, don't think you necessarily have to buy it. You might have it. It's just about using it strategically. So, um, Yeah, overall I think we are seeing more responses to sulphur. It's probably the most common deficiency that I see in alfalfa because it's rare that it doesn't nodulate well, particularly on soils that have a fairly neutral pH, which is a lot of agricultural ground in Ontario. Mark brought up the pH adjustment discussion as well. Cedric, we'll start with sulphur though first. Are you seeing more need for sulphur or sulphur being included in recommendations when it comes to fertility? Oh yeah, for certain, and we're seeing a lot of use of ammonium sulphate down in New Brunswick, my neck of the woods. Works well with spuds, you know, they're mixing it with calcium ammonium nitrate and it's It's a safe source and a source of sulphur too, so that all makes sense. I want to jump back though just a little bit because we were talking about fertility on pastures, and one thing that I'm a big fan of is feeding out on pasture, right? So we've been bale grazing for, you know, a decade and a half now, and I find that's just such a tremendous way to maximise nutrient use efficiency. feeding the bales, you know, they eat where the manure is coming out. And, and yes, there's significant impact there, but when it comes again, when looking at those, the low fertility rates on, on those pastures, you know, we're doing a job on a defined area and you're really loading the, the soil nutrient bank account, uh, for, for a decade, right? So being strategic in how we're using, uh, those, the nutrients that come with the bales and placing them out there, I think is, is a really, um, really effective way to get that job done, especially if you're trying to minimise labour for spreading manure. And I will— I should have jumped in earlier, and I'm now getting to understand how this game works. Peter is absolutely right, that alfalfa was mature, but I was fencing in Newfoundland 2 weeks ago, I was at CBIC last week, and it should have been down and out. But those are custom bales that are going to a stocker, grower who overwinters, and so he likes that kind of alfalfa. So it's, it's ready-made for the programme. There you go. I would also like it, Cedric, just so you know, because I need to feed dry ewes over the winter and it would be candy for them. For a dairy cow, not so much milk in it, but it's all about matching, matching stage, whether it's hay to the animal or turning animals out in the right pasture. Same thing. Okay. And yes, Cedric, you will catch on. There's a lot that happens in the You really have to try and keep up. Yeah, you got it, you got to be— it's true. Okay, so Pete wants to know about strategy for sulphur. So Pete says that he's seeing it, so some deficiencies on dairy farms that have manure in rotation, and as you said, alfalfa is a huge sulphur user. So when do you think that sulphur should go on potentially? What are our windows? I'm going to back up a step because he's talking about the whole strategy. So there are labs that will give you a sulphur soil test number. Unlike some of those other nutrients, in Ontario, we don't have an accredited sulphur test. So that— Not yet. Not yet. I know there are researchers working on it, but we don't have one yet. So actually, your better indicator, if you really want to cheque, like, how deficient is this, is a tissue test. So top 6 inches, I believe, at early bud stage. And if it's below 0.22%, that's a deficient alfalfa plant. So that would be your, that would be your metric if you were looking for a way to measure that. In terms of source and timing, sulphur is made plant available, like Cedric said, elemental is not available right away. It's like slow release. It's the sulphate forms that are plant available immediately. So because it's microbes that are turning other forms of sulphur into sulphate, they need a certain amount of heat to actually get going in the spring. So that early springtime is actually when we're most likely to see a sulphur deficiency because the microbes just aren't up and going yet. The soil is too cold. So around green-up is a good time to hit it with some sulphate. I don't care what form of sulphate, but a sulphate fertiliser would be readily available. The plant can get it by the time that's been used up. Hopefully soil bugs are up and at it and are doing their thing. Yeah, I mentioned elemental in the fall because of the cost savings of application and because it's usually cheaper than a sulphate, but it's not going to be necessarily available first thing in the spring. So that's kind of some things to consider and how you might approach it because yeah, manure is a great source of nutrients, but like I said earlier, it's not a balanced source of nutrients. That's right. So it's often that we're filling gaps somewhere. Once we've got all the manure out of storage, we get it on the field, there's probably a gap somewhere. And that's really where an agronomist is needed to say, hey, okay, here's how we fill those gaps cost-effectively to make sure this whole system is working. Well, and That's one of the key points too, is that, you know, an elemental sulphur in the fall or something like that might be a really good part of like a long-term, we're planning for this, as opposed to a, we're seeing an issue, we need to address it, where your sulphate comes in right away. Okay, we are rapidly running out of time, which I knew that we would, but I want to get to Darren's question just quickly. You mentioned taking a cut post-dormancy. Which would be similar to his question is, can you graze alfalfa in the fall after a killing frost without hurting the stand? So Cedric, when you— so it's you're taking it as a cut, maybe not necessarily grazing it, but how do you manage that either post-frost or dormant stand differently? Do you hurt it at all? Well, certainly if I was going to graze it, it would have to be controlled, and you're going to really have to manage the animal impact on those grounds. So it's easy after that first killing frost, we give it a week or so, cross with the mower, I'll lay everything in 4-foot swath, mow, bale, pick up, out. If you're going to graze it, certainly your crosswires, make sure you got small paddocks, move them in, move them out, probably not going to want to be in the paddock for more than a day or 2 max, and keep them moving nice and tight. And really in that case you got to be careful too of the weather, right? You got a wet stretch in there and that animal impact, you can do a fair amount of damage in a hurry. Yeah, the other thing I would add is a bit of a bloat risk. I think that's why Cedric said wait a week at least after that frost is that killing frost does rupture some of those plant cells, especially in the leaves, which are the best bit. Bit. So, um, yeah, really, you know, all your best practises for bloat management. So turn them out full, move them when the crop is dry, often in the afternoon. You might want to supplement with, like, throw a couple of bales of dry hay out there, something that's, that's got some fibre in them just to help them manage and self-regulate a little bit. So yeah, all of, all of your best practises for preventing bloat are important for grazing alfalfa after killing frost and then yeah watching out for any kind of pugging damage, any wet weather because you can do a number on those crowns. I love the word pugging, also it's like hugging but worse, but also it'd be great if you plan to take a stand out in the spring, great way to knock it back in the fall if you really want to is you could hammer it in the fall and don't let it go dormant, take it out in the spring if you really wanted to, but you know that's just If you've got nothing better to do. Okay, yeah. Also works for shoring up pastures that are— maybe you're looking to get a little legume content into, and maybe we're gonna frost seed, right? Put the drone out there, get over with the buggy. A little heavier graze in the fall opens that up, gets ready for spring. Yep, okay. Look at us using animals for things we need to get done. It's like they're useful, you guys. We're going to convert all these agronomists. Okay, Producer Jay, I'm sorry, we're running out of time. I haven't used either clip, he's going to be so angry with me, but let's go to our last read of the night and then we're going to talk about how teamwork makes the dream work after this read. Thanks to our show sponsors, the Canola School, Profitable Practises, and Wheat Pete's Word. Each Wednesday, Peter Wheat Pete Johnson answers your top agronomy questions in this dynamic Welcome back to the RealAg Radio podcast covering soil health, cover crops, planting, herbicides, and much, much more. Have a question? Leave him a message at 1-888-746-3311, send him a tweet @WheatPete, or email him at pjohnson@realagriculture.com. Just want to note the pea Pete says that Mark's never fed sheep because they will leave all the coarse stuff in the feeder. Pete, your problem is you're feeding them in a feeder. You feed them outside on the hay fields and/or pastures, and then whatever they leave behind is just fodder for next year's microbes, and it just cycles. So there you go. That's, that's just showing you've got to get out of the barn, Pete. Get out of the barn. Okay, Christine, let's go to— or Jay, let's So let's go to slide 3 of Christine's, although we should probably touch on slide 1 at one point as well. But tell me, Christine, about the importance of everybody being on the same page when we're trying to address what are we trying to achieve here with our forages and what's the best course of action on the agronomy side. Why does it matter that everybody actually maybe stands on the tailgate together to have this conversation? Absolutely. And it matters because you've got 3 different experts that are experts in separate fields. So the agronomist understands crop production, right? Yield potential, crop rotation, pest management, soil types, testing, like all that stuff. And I don't have to explain what agronomists know to this audience. The show is literally called The Agronomist. It is. The nutritionists, the livestock nutritionists are experts in ingredients. So I always tell people that forage quality, like what they go, well, what's good forage quality? And I ask, well, what animal are you feeding it to? And I think some of our conversation earlier hinted at that where Cedric's alfalfa is, yeah, a little too far gone for lactating dairy cows, but it's great feed for a lot of other types of animals. So the nutritionist knows what kind of quality those animals need. Yeah. They're used to working with ingredients, and they're the ones that are going to be making a balanced diet for these animals with whatever is grown on the farm. The farmer is also an expert. They understand their farm's goals, their past challenges, their production system. They know their equipment. They understand what labour capacity they have or limitations. Like, they know the farm and some of its history that the other 2 experts may not know. So by bringing all 3 of these people around the same kitchen table or on the same tailgate, it's a lot more constructive to get a forage crop plan done because we'll know how much of each crop we need in terms of ingredients based on yield potential where you are. And the farmers spend a lot less time playing broken telephone going, okay, well, the agronomist said one thing and the nutritionist said something else. Who do I listen to in this situation? If you've got both, if you've got all of them together, they can understand each other's point of view because they can ask questions of each other. Well, the agronomist might want one thing and the nutritionist wants another. They can work that out so that they agree on a plan before they all go their separate ways. So it's efficient, it's effective. I wish we did it more in this industry, but if you are at all in a position to help get all 3 of these people at the same meeting, Yeah. It's worth it. Please do. I feel like it just takes care of exactly that, of the game of telephone, of like, well, my nutritionist said I need this, or my agronomist said I have to do this. And yeah, you can just hammer that out right there and find either the middle ground or why one choice, you know, is better than the other, etc. Cedric, I know you also love Venn diagrams, so your thoughts on this? How important is it to get everybody to the same table necessarily? Yeah, and as in most things, I'm well aligned with Christine on this. I recall starting with new clients and the first thing we do is, what is your cropping system and how does it go? And I think sometimes you can get caught in that status quo and say, well, that's That's the way it needs to be, that's where we need to go. But when you stop and come back, and I would ask nutritionists, what is your dream ration here? What is your dream ration, right? Because we often look, ah yeah, I want to make 20% alfalfa, and a lot of nutritionists in my experience down here would say, listen, 20 is hard for me to balance. I can do better with a 16 to 18, right? It will do a good job on the corn silage. And Christine hit the nail on the head, what is the actual yield of corn silage, which is going to tell me what I need for acres. Because, you know, we got a lot of growers that are fertilising for, down in my neck of the woods, 16 to 18 tonne per acre, but the actual yield is somewhere probably closer to 12 to 14, right? So now we're shorting ourselves on alfalfa, right, because we're overestimating. Now we're over-fertilizing because we're shooting for an unrealistic yield goal, right? So it really brings things into perspective. I think it's important in this context for everybody to just be honest and real, right, and come to the table with what you have and really make a solid plan because in some cases if you're overproducing on either your stored forage or your corn silage, maybe there's an opportunity to put 50 acres of soybeans in the mix and use some Roundup Ready genetics to clean up some weeds, right, and make the systems flow, right? But until you come down and take a look objectively at that land base and start to hit, you know, set some clear agronomic and farm management goals, these questions or these conversations can be quite challenging. Now, I do want to talk about pH. It's been mentioned a couple times, and pH of course does matter. It matters for all sorts of different reasons. Producer Jay, let's go to Cedric's, I think it's slide 7, I think it's the last 3, yeah, 7, 8, 9, I think are the ones. What are we looking at here? Walk us through what we're trying to manage here. Yes, and I'm so glad it came up. I mean, it is corn fundamental, getting that pH up. This is, so 3 sets of photos I took today, one dairy and one of my beef, and this is actually in a potato rotation. And I can see throughout the entire season, and this is only going to be in for one year, it's a rotation crop, my neighbour actually harvests, I help him harvest it, you can see these carve-outs within the field and you might say, oh, those are low spots, drownouts, but they're not, right? And that was the one that gave it away to me. What I'm surmising here is this is actually low pH zone within the field, and they were oblong, and they were throughout this entire— there's probably 50 acres within this block split up by tarps. I put this up here, Lyndsey, to highlight the importance for understanding soil variability. Not every acre is built the same, as we know, and if we get out and start to do a good job at grid sampling these fields, understanding yield zones, And using variable rate technology, it's absolutely incredible what we've seen down this neck of the woods, and I'm sure it's everywhere we go, when we start to use that variable rate technology to its full extent and normalise whether or not it's potash or phosphorus or pH, productivity that we see on these lands. is staggering. And in most cases, and I think Pete had alluded to this earlier about the guy or gal that was going to put 800 pounds of potash down, he did talk about variable rating by soil zone, right? So yeah, 800 here, 0 here, it all normalises, right? Yeah, exactly. Next slide, Jay. I think so, this is the same, so looking at the same setup here That's what you figure is going on here, is it's the pH difference. It's the pH, yeah. Can you walk us through what the rotation is with potatoes in the— like, so it's an annual forage that goes in and you take it for forage? Yeah, this is for a large corporate in here in the Carleton County area in New Brunswick, so potatoes seed and table for this particular operator, then they'll follow with a crop of oats, and then they underseed it to alfalfa. It's fairly new that they've actually put alfalfa in the system, and there have been some encouraging notes on moving from a clover-based product to an alfalfa-based product, largely because of clover being such a host for Verticillium wilt. and that stimulates the early dying complex in potatoes. So getting out to alfalfa, the other thing it's doing, this alfalfa, like the regrowth on this is heads and shoulders above what we used to see in some of the red clover crops, largely because it was common too, right? So this is just a really nice alfalfa crop. Okay, and last slide, Jay, of this grouping, Because this is a bit closer up to look at. So what are we looking at here? This is regrowth, this is about 10 days, and again, I remember working with the father-in-law way back when we had a seed house and there was a lot of common triple mix product, which would be red clover, alsike, and timothy down this country. I said, listen, let's elevate ourselves here, guys, let's get in, if it's only going to be in for a year, 2, let's get something that's going to grow back for us and maybe take 3, maybe take 4 cuts and work hard at it. But it, this, this struck me this morning of just how vigorous this is growing. Obviously, Christine, it's quite thin, so it's not the kind of— this would be a replacement stand, but this is only in for 1 year, right? So plant it, plant it right, feed it right, hit it hard. Yeah. Okay, so it's not— Christine, I've heard today, maybe yesterday, I heard about floor sweeping blends. Have you heard about these? Anyway, I think, I think that's what Cedric's referring to is these— Don't do that. Don't do the floor sweeping blends. I've heard that Timothy, Alsike, red clover mix called tar in Northern Ontario. You'll hear growers say, yeah, just put some tar on it, and you don't know what they're talking about. That sounds They can't farm that anymore. Terrible. Yeah, exactly. It's not what you think, everybody. Okay, one, Christine, I'll go to you. Just one mention, because this comes up when we talk about forages, is this connection of potassium and milk fever and sort of that interplay that we sometimes have to worry about. What do we have to think about on that? Do you want to go to the slide? It's slide 1. Yeah, I put that slide first because I know that these conversations are always— They're everywhere, Kristine. But yeah, I put this slide first because it kind of was an example that would feed into the, the Purdue plots photo. Yeah, um, basically, for those of you who work with dairy clients, many of them have a nutritionist that have them scared, absolutely, absolutely scared of milk And it is serious. I don't, I don't want to make light of that. If they're— if it's not caught early and treated correctly, cows can die. So it is serious. Um, and basically dairy cows' metabolisms, they're, they're doing incredible things, but they're on a knife's edge. So if they have too much K in their diet leading up to giving birth, they can have a metabolic crash. Yeah. is essentially what happens. Mm-hmm. So many dairy producers are reluctant to apply enough potassium to their forage crops because of luxury consumption. So if there's excess potassium in the soil, plants will take up more than the bare minimum that they need. Alfalfa gets the worst rap for this. It's not a unique to alfalfa thing. At the same stage of maturity, grasses and legumes can take up the the same amount of K. I think the exception is corn silage. We may need a corn agronomist to confirm this, but I've never seen— haven't been able to find a reference to luxury consumption in corn. It's a very large grass. I don't know. It is. It's a very large subtropical grass that we've applied immense breeding pressure to. There are a few things to keep in mind, like the potassium concentration declines as plants mature. You can use that to your advantage when making dry cow hay. Potassium will also leach out of rained-on forage. So if you cut the crop and it rains on it, that has leached out some K. It has also leached out some sugars. It may accelerate spoiling. So it's not like a best practise. Right. But there's less potassium in it. And, you know, as part of that broader crop plan, as part of that conversation with the nutritionist, I've— my opinion is the best strategy is designate a field for dry cow hay because you can mine the potassium out of it. You can sacrifice some of that persistence and yield and nobody's feelings are hurt. And then fertilise the rest of the farm to have that persistence and yield that you actually need. Because having low-K forage everywhere just in case we happen to feed that lot of hay to a dry cow— Right. is craziness and is a headache for everybody. So, um, that was, that was why I brought that. It was more supposed to be like a conversation starter in case— I don't know if Cedric and I have ever been shy or quiet, but it could happen. I was gonna say, yeah. Um, no, I think it is a good point. Yeah, Cedric, go ahead. Well, and it feeds well into what we chatted about in the last slide with, with having strategic goals, right? And having that field set aside specifically for those dry cows so everybody can sleep at night Because I agree, the last thing you want to do is say, well, I got to shore up all my potassium on my farm, and all of a sudden now you've got, you know, massive winterkill in your alfalfa and it's not working, and now it's the alfalfa's fault, or need more tile drainage. Well, no, we just need to manage our potassium. So let's just be strategic on how we're growing this feed. Yeah, absolutely. And again, that also exactly that speaks to the Matching the forage we have to the animal class or production, part of the production cycle takes some planning and away you go. So there you go, agronomists, forage people and livestock people think about these things too. Anyway, we also have very complicated it depends things, so there you go. We do. Okay, we do. All right, okay, we are out of time. This has been fantastic. We did, Christine, 10 points for getting the word pugging in here. Cedric wins for the most photos and bark ash, never heard of that before, so that's a good 10 points. So there you go. We did not though come up with a master's project, so if anybody has any ideas, that's also one of the things I like to do on the show is come up with master's projects or PhD products for people, so just drop them in the chat and then we'll assign those later. Don't worry if you If you put them in the chat, you don't have to do it. We'll find somebody else. Okay, next week we are going to talk about soil biology and specifically biological products. It's very warm in here and my fan is just doing ridiculous things to my hair and I love it. Isn't it great? I thought it was like a Maybelline commercial. Yeah, it's like very soap opera, very soap opera. And I don't know because it wasn't doing this before, so I must have moved. Anyway, okay, we'll end it there. We'll see everybody next week. Thank you, Cedric. Thank you, Christine. Have a great night, everybody. Thanks for the opportunity. See you guys.