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Mike Howell (00:08):
The Dirt, with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podKast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by eKonomics.com, farming’s go-to informational resource, I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research, news, and issues. Helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
(00:38):
Well, hello again, everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. Glad you’re tuning in this week. We’ve got Dr. Glen Harris with the University of Georgia with us today. Glen, welcome to The Dirt.
Dr. Glen Harris (00:47):
Thanks for having me. Good to be with you.
Mike Howell (00:49):
Glen, if you would, give our listeners a little bit of information about yourself, where you’re located, and what you do there at the University of Georgia.
Dr. Glen Harris (00:55):
Yeah, I started University of Georgia March 1st, 1994. I’m going into my 30th year with UGA, located in Tifton, which is south of our main campus in Athens. I’m extension agronomist, soils and fertilizers, and I work mostly cotton, peanuts, corn, soybeans, and any kind of basic soils questions, working with county agents and farmers and doing a lot of meetings, as you know.
Mike Howell (01:19):
I well know the meeting schedule that you have. I used to be with extension, as you well know. And for our listeners, I guess that’s how Glen and I first met, way back when I was working with peanuts. I knew absolutely nothing about peanuts when I got started, and made a phone call to Georgia. And it didn’t take very long before I got connected with Glen and he was able to help us out on a lot of fertility questions, and actually came over to Mississippi several times to do our grower meetings and work with our growers over here, teaching them about fertility and peanuts.
(01:47):
So what I thought we would talk about today, Glen, is start off talking about cotton. We’re full-blown into spring and planters are rolling these days, and it’s not going to be long before it’s time to plant cotton. And wanted to give our listeners something to think about in terms of fertility in cotton and what they need to be looking at, and I guess we’ll just start with the big ones. Let’s start off and talk about nitrogen. What kind of recommendations can you give our listeners about nitrogen and nitrogen management in cotton?
Dr. Glen Harris (02:11):
Nitrogen is an interesting one to me, because I think a lot of people just want me to give them one rate, and that’s hard to do without knowing some more information. When I first started in ’94… And you got to remember this is back before transgenic cotton and higher yields… we had one recommendation at University of Georgia: 60 pounds of nitrogen per acre for 750-pound of lint.
(02:34):
And what happened was when we went to transgenic starting in ’96 and soon after that, we started making higher yields. All of a sudden people started making three-bale cotton. And I had county agents ask me, that said, “That must take a little more nitrogen.” And sure enough, we did some on-farm studies and some small plot studies, and we actually increased our nitrogen rates.
(02:53):
We go by yield goal, and I’m surprised other surrounding states don’t focus on this as much, but we still have that 60-pound of nitrogen per acre for 750-pound lint, but then we go up by 15 pounds for every half bale up to three-bale, which would be 105 pounds of nitrogen.
(03:11):
Now, a couple things about that. We do recommend splitting it a quarter to a third at planting and the rest at sidedress. And also, I think a lot of people still don’t believe you can make three-bale on 105 pounds of nitrogen in south Georgia, but you can. We might have to go up to 120 if we’re battling some other things. It’s an interesting question to me. Overall, I think we’re doing a pretty good job with nitrogen management.
Mike Howell (03:32):
Dr. Harris, you mentioned there’s a lot of factors that go into that, and one thing that comes to mind is soil type. Now, I know in my neck of the woods over in the Mississippi area, we’ve got a lot of sandy soils like you do there in Georgia, but we also grow a lot of cotton on some heavy clay, some buckshot type soils. I know you don’t have quite as much of that heavy clay soil as we do, but does the soil type have a lot to do with nitrogen and the rates that we’ll use?
Dr. Glen Harris (03:54):
Yes, no doubt. In fact, when I was just talking, I was thinking in the back of my mind, and we haven’t got it to the point where we can actually tell you your exact soil series, exactly what you need, but we got them separated out in Georgia to Coastal Plain and then Piedmont and, of course, deep sands. And deep sand technically for us, is if you don’t have any subsoil within the top 20 inches, and we have some of those soils.
(04:17):
Like you said, we don’t have a lot of that buckshot Delta ice cream soil like you have, they call it. We don’t grow a lot of our cotton on a heavier clay, but the Piedmont soil’s got a little clay in it; it’s a little different. But that’s definitely a factor. The deep sands is the one that’s interesting. But again, even on a deep sand, irrigated deep sand, if you split your nitrogen, we don’t think you need to go much above 120 pounds of N per acre total.
Mike Howell (04:41):
We’ve talked a lot on the podKast in previous episodes about split applications to make sure we’re not losing that. But another thing we’ve talked about, Glen, is a lot of these products out there today that we can use to help prevent this nitrogen loss. We know we can lose nitrogen through volatilization and leaching and denitrification. Are you a fan of some of these products to help with this, or is that something we’re wasting our money on?
Dr. Glen Harris (05:03):
That’s a great question, Mike. I’m kind of a fan from the standpoint is that there are urease inhibitors and nitrification inhibitors that are out there that will work, and that’s good. Finding out exactly which situation we need them in and whether they’ll pay, that’s a little trickier. And I tell people, “You always got to keep cost in mind too.” If I was a grower, the way I would look at a lot of this is if I save 10 pounds of N per acre using one of these, but I can buy 10 extra pounds just as cheap or cheaper, I’m going to do that.
(05:35):
I really think where these products are really going to start coming in and we’re going to really become big fans of them, is if they ever start limiting how much nitrogen we can use. And I believe in just the state to my south, they’re starting to do that, and they’re saying, “Hey, we only want them to put out this much nitrogen.” That’s really going to make those products valuable to us.
Mike Howell (05:53):
That’s right. We’re constantly hearing things about that and keeping our eyes open for that. Glen, anything else on nitrogen before we move on?
Dr. Glen Harris (06:01):
The split thing between planting, the sidedress, of course, between first square and first bloom, we can do some foliar. We do have people doing foliar. Foliar is interesting in me. A lot of people seem to love it or hate it. But feed grade urea and there’s other products out there, a little foliar feeding during peak bloom.
(06:18):
You can’t split nitrogen up on cotton as good as you can on corn. Again, I work all crops. We’re putting nitrogen out through the pivot on corn up to tassel. Once you get to about the third week of bloom, we don’t like putting nitrogen on the ground anyway, and putting through a pivot’s a ground application.
(06:34):
So we got some of that fine tuning stuff on nitrogen. But basically, if you’d settle on the proper N rate and split it, like I said, quarter to third at planting, the rest of sidedress, you should do pretty well.
Mike Howell (06:46):
Glen, I was ready to move on, but you touched on something right there I think we need to go back and focus in on just a little bit. You mentioned that you could get too late putting that nitrogen out. And if you would real quickly, give our listeners a time frame. When do we want to get that nitrogen out? When does a cotton plant need that nitrogen?
Dr. Glen Harris (07:03):
So the whole idea of the split is because two reasons really, maybe three. If we put all of our nitrogen out on planting, especially on our sandy ground, it’s not going to be around later when the plant’s really ramping up. Because your needs, they start out kind of low, and as the plant grows, and really once you start blooming, that’s peak demand. It’s just an uphill curve, so that’s why we like to split it. And once you get to about a third week of bloom, the plant is focusing on making bolls at the expense of making new roots, fine roots and all that, so that your efficiency of uptake out of soil applied gets really low.
(07:38):
The other reason we like to split it and not put too much upfront, of course, is we don’t want too much rank growth early where it won’t shift into that reproductive. So, there’s a number of reasons why we’d like to. And again, ideally you would spoonfeed it. That’s hard to do. But putting, for example, about 30 pounds of planting, that should get you to somewhere between first square and first bloom, and then you put your sidedress on, and then you’re going to have it there for uptake when you got your peak bloom the first four weeks of bloom.
Mike Howell (08:05):
Perfect. That’s what I was getting at. We need to make sure we get that out there before bloom, and that’s when the plants are really going to be needing that nitrogen. Glen, I’m sure we could sit here and talk about nitrogen all day, but we do need to move on and cover some of these other nutrients. What about phosphorus? What does a cotton plant need in terms of phosphorus?
Dr. Glen Harris (08:23):
Phosphorus-wise, we just don’t have as much troubles here in south Georgia for a number of reasons. I think we’ve done a good job of fertilizing with phosphorus fertilizers and maintaining good levels. And then, of course, we got a lot of chicken litter. We’re the number one chicken-producing state in the country, so we have a lot of chicken litter and that’s helped build our phosphorus.
(08:41):
And to be honest with you, I just have not done a whole lot of phosphorus work in my 29 years here on cotton just because we haven’t really needed it. I think, again, we’re fertilizing either with chicken litter or commercial fertilizer and maintaining good levels, and we just don’t have a lot of phosphorus. In fact, I tell people N, P and K are the big three, but if I had to list them in order for growth and yield, it’d probably be N, K and P in that order. And then I might even put K in front of nitrogen on cotton, and we’re going to get to that in a second.
Mike Howell (09:10):
Yeah, and that’s really one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show today. I was in Mississippi State at the row crop short course back in December and ran into you there, and you gave a presentation talking about potassium in cotton. And that’s something we’ve been dealing with for at least 15 or 20 years here in the Southeast. When those plants really start loading up, we’re seeing this potassium deficiency and having trouble figuring out how to get more in there. So if you would, talk to us a little bit about potassium and what we need to be concerned about with potassium.
Dr. Glen Harris (09:40):
Yeah, potassium on cotton, to me, has been really interesting. It’s one of my favorite things to work on and talk about. And really it is probably our number one issue in cotton. Again, I think we do a decent job with nitrogen. Don’t have a lot of phosphorous problems. We really don’t have a lot of secondary nutrient problems. We’re starting to get a little more sulfur. But potassium, year in and year out, that’s the one that’s going to get us. And there’s a lot of things going on there.
(10:05):
I’ve done a lot of work research-wise and on farm looking at things like rates. The 4R is basically looking at rates of potash and then how we split it up, so that’s timing. We’ve looked at placement, put it close to the row or not. Source is the only one I haven’t done a lot of it because there’s just not that many sources. But I have compared things like muriate of potash to K-Mag. And then I’ve also done a lot of foliar work, foliar potassium on cotton.
(10:32):
So overall, it’s a really interesting dynamic, and like I said, if you’re going to have deficiency, that’s going to be the one. In fact, I kid around with my colleagues, because if we have a lot of deficiency that year, they claim I didn’t do my job. But I don’t know if that’s fair, because I think sometimes the weather gets us. A couple things about potash too is it’s mobile but it’s not as mobile as nitrogen. And I think a lot of folks, we’ve gotten to the point where we think we got to treat it just like nitrogen. That’s not really true.
(10:59):
And it really comes into the timing issue. If I had to pick one piece of advice I’d give your listeners right now is that I’ve done a lot of work with split applications of potash. We just talked about it. We split our nitrogen, a quarter to a third at planting, the rest at sidedress. But potash, I like to have it all out at planting. And then if you do anything, instead of putting more on the ground at sidedress time, I’d rather actually see you wait and do some foliar feeding. At least it’s worked for us in south Georgia. It’s just something about how potash works.
(11:29):
And then it’s a little tricky too, because when I start telling people I don’t think split applications is helping them, they’ll say something like, “Well, I put all my potash at planting and then I put some extra at sidedress.” And I’m thinking, “Yeah, that’s probably going to work pretty well.” But that’s different than taking your recommendation and putting half at planting and then waiting till sidedress to put your other half. I’ve run into troubles doing that. We have actually had some deficiencies in yield decreases doing that.
(11:55):
So the split… And that’s probably what I talked about there in Starkville. The split is probably one of the most interesting things right now still going on on cotton.
Mike Howell (12:05):
Dr. Harris, we talked about splitting that potassium application and you said you really aren’t a fan of that, but some growers are seeing a benefit from putting extra on in that late time period. Is that a good idea, or can we be putting out too much? With these prices and environmental concerns that we’re constantly worried about, we don’t want to be putting out too much if we don’t need it. Are the plants actually taking it up? Is that something that’s going to benefit us?
Dr. Glen Harris (12:27):
That’s a great question. That’s one thing I still haven’t really nailed down the most because it’s just easy for me to say put it at planting and then foliar. How late’s too late? I mean, I know how late’s too late like nitrogen on corn, for example. But how late’s too late? I really think first square you’d probably still be all right, put some potash out. I probably wouldn’t put any out after first bloom. And people will say, “Well, I’ve done it and it looks good,” but I don’t know if they followed that through to yield. And I’ve waited till the crop is up to put my potash out and been fine. And again, the demand is not as great early on when that plant’s just starting out. So that’s a great question.
(13:04):
And there are some situations where putting it out late might help us. I’ve had situations where I’ve been really wet, had a lot of rainfall. And I didn’t think you could drown the south Georgia sand, but we’ve had some years where we almost did. And in that case the roots were probably just sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, and when it finally dried out and we put some out, they took it up, that kind of thing.
(13:25):
I don’t know if I can answer that exactly, but I do know that these new cotton varieties fruit up earlier, and so I like to have a decent amount of potash at planting, so then maybe a little at sidedress on the ground. And we definitely know foliar can work if you need it. So we got some options there and some tools.
(13:45):
And doing all that, you still might get potash deficiency. It depends on when you get it, and sometimes it depends on… When you’re talking about seeing the deficiency and everything, I’ve had calls where growers say, “I got potassium deficiency and lost all my leaves,” and I go, “Oh, no.” And I go out there, and then I find out it’s because they have four-bale cotton. It’s loaded up and they got four-bale cotton, and that’s a good problem to have. It’s a different situation then if you go out there and you got deficiency around first bloom and you hurt your yield.
Mike Howell (14:13):
That’s exactly right. And I’ve run into that situation countless times, and we really didn’t have a good answer. And one of the things I always like to do is blame our buddy Bob Kemerait and say it’s a disease problem coming in that’s making it look like a potassium deficiency. You can pass that information along if you like.
Dr. Glen Harris (14:29):
Well, I’m glad you mentioned that, actually. I want to make a comment on that. We do get leaf spot diseases, because potassium deficiency on cotton, and Bob and I, Dr. Kemerait and I worked a lot together when we started first seeing this. And as you probably know, Mike, there’s one called stemphylium is the most common one. And a lot of people know now that when you see that, it’s potassium deficiency. Hopefully they also know that potassium deficiency is the main problem and actually spraying a fungicide doesn’t help, because if you don’t fix the potassium problem, it doesn’t help to spray a fungicide. So Bob always says that’s my problem when you get stemphylium, because it’s caused by a potassium deficiency.
(15:08):
And it also begs the question in, well, can I try to rescue it? It all depends on how severe it gets and when you catch it. Because if you catch it early enough, we think some foliar, because it’s probably going to happen during peak bloom. Fourth week of bloom is when… If it’s going to crash, that’s when it’s going to crash. And if it gets so bad and so yellow and so ate up with leaf spot, obviously if it drops its leaves, you can’t foliar feed it. But if you can catch it early enough when it’s just starting to yellow up, first get the spots, you might be able to do some foliar feed.
Mike Howell (15:37):
That’s exactly right. And you just mentioned, we always see it… And I always told growers that it’s going to show up that first rainfall we get right after the 4th of July. I don’t know what the rainfall after the 4th of July has to do with it, if that just makes that plant take off growing with the extra rainfall they get. But that’s when we always start seeing it, and it just goes downhill from there.
Dr. Glen Harris (15:57):
Interesting. Around here, we usually get some pretty warm weather around 4th of July. If it’s going be 100 degrees, that seems to be when it is too. It might all come together as a perfect storm.
Mike Howell (16:06):
And I hope Dr. Kemerait’s not going to get upset with us talking about him a little bit. That was just a good lead-in to talk about this disease cycle as well.
Dr. Glen Harris (16:14):
He’s a good friend of mine, he’ll get over it.
Mike Howell (16:15):
Dr. Harris, one other thing you mentioned in that was the need for sulfur, an increasing need for sulfur, and that’s something we’ve talked a little bit about on the show as well. What can you tell us about sulfur?
Dr. Glen Harris (16:25):
Both corn and cotton is interesting to me. I don’t know why, but we seem to be seeing a little more sulfur deficiencies. Maybe because we’re pushing our yields and using a little more nitrogen, and you know need to balance that kind of nitrogen and sulfur. And the best way to do that really on both those crops… And it’s probably more critical in corn than cotton even. But I like to have some sulfur planting and then also with my sidedress nitrogen. And the good news is we got a lot of sulfur materials out there. There’s plenty of options to put stuff at pre-plant, and then we also have nitrogen sidedress materials that have sulfur in them. If you’re using urea or ammonium nitrate, you can blend into ammonium sulfate or something else. We have liquids that have sulfur, liquid nitrogens that have sulfur in them. And the nice thing about that is even if you start pushing your nitrogen rates, you got that sulfur in that with the material, so it balances itself.
(17:17):
I don’t talk a lot about balances and ratios, but that nitrogen and sulfur, and really, if you think you have a sulfur problem, the best thing to do is take a tissue sample and we’ll look at the nitrogen/sulfur ratio in the tissue and that will tell us. Again, I think people are getting a little carried away with all the ratios in the tissue and all that, but one that you can take to the bank is that nitrogen/sulfur ratio in a tissue.
Mike Howell (17:40):
That’s exactly right. And I’m seeing sulfur deficiencies in a lot of crops these days. Dr. Harris, we’ve talked about the big four nutrients there, but we know we’ve got a couple other macronutrients and then a ton of micronutrients we haven’t touched on. Are there any of those that bring out something specific we need to talk about today?
Dr. Glen Harris (18:00):
The good news is we don’t have a lot of calcium problems. If you’re liming to where you should be and using gypsum on your peanut rotation, our calcium levels are good. Magnesium, we don’t have a lot of troubles with it. We used to actually track magnesium in a petiole sample, and we dropped it because we just don’t have that many magnesium problems.
(18:19):
And then micronutrients, really boron, we still have a half of pound of boron per acre recommendation. It’s easier to do with foliar feeds if you’re going to put it on the ground. And that’s important to pollination and fruiting, so that’s still in there. After that, soil tests for zinc and manganese, but we really rarely have those or see those problems on cotton. We’ll see manganese deficiency and zinc toxicity on the peanut, of course, but as far as cotton, luckily it doesn’t seem to be too susceptible to zinc or manganese deficiency.
Mike Howell (18:51):
Dr. Harris, you touched on one other thing there that I’m glad you touched on. We went through a spell in the first season, that every guest I had was touching on pH and we had a discussion about pH just about every episode. You mentioned the pH and making sure that our pH is right. Do you want to elaborate on pH just a little more before we move on?
Dr. Glen Harris (19:10):
I’m kind of smiling. I was smiling when you said that because it’s probably a good thing, because pH is super critical, as you know. We’re even at the point where we’re grid sampling and recommending two and a half acre grids and variable rate liming, and that can take care of a lot of this stuff. And the interesting thing is, again, most of our cotton growers also grow peanuts, and they worry about zinc toxicity because peanuts are sensitive, so we have a tendency to bring the pH up to take care of zinc toxicity on peanut. In theory, you could force a manganese deficiency, I guess, on cotton, but luckily we don’t see it that much.
(19:45):
But there’s a balance there, and luckily we have some research-based graphs that I could show you that we basically tell you, depending on where your zinc level’s in your soil, you need to have your pH here to take care of zinc toxicity on peanut. But then also if you want to avoid… I have another graph. You want to avoid manganese deficiency on peanut or cotton, this is where you need to run your manganese levels depending on where you want your pH.
(20:08):
So both of those micronutrients are very… They’re dependent. Their availability is dependent on the pH. And it’s interesting to me. I’ve thought about it a long time and I look at those graphs all the time. And I can look at them and understand them, but if you haven’t seen them for a while, it just takes a little while to think about it, that, yeah, when you’re trying to tie up zinc to help a peanut, you could be hurting. You’re tying up your manganese also and causing a deficiency.
Mike Howell (20:32):
That’s right. All of this works hand in hand and it’s a fine balance in there. Glen, you’ve mentioned peanuts a couple of times, and we wanted to talk a little bit about peanuts as well today. When I first started working in peanuts… And that’s been, what, 15 years ago now? I was visiting one of our colleagues that’s retired now, and he said, “All you have to do for peanuts is get your pH right and put out a little boron, and don’t worry about anything else as far as nutrition.” Is that right or is there something else we need to be looking at?
Dr. Glen Harris (20:59):
Well, like a lot of things, there’s some truth to that, but also you got to be a little careful. And a good agronomist answers every question with, “It depends,” right? So, it depends. The way I look at it, legumes are… They can fix nitrogen, but we do have to have our pH right. And I like inoculating even in a short rotation to make sure, because we’re saving a lot of money on nitrogen fertilizer on peanut if we get them well-nodulated and they fix nitrogen. P and K, they’re good scavengers, but you can get low enough where we will recommend P and K on a peanut, and it’s usually K that happens because phosphorus builds up a little more. But back when we were growing some peanut after peanut, or anytime you get some new ground that’s a little lower on K to start with, you can get pretty low, but we can get low enough where you still need to put maybe some P and K on a peanut.
(21:50):
So you take N, P and K out, it really comes down to calcium and boron. Calcium’s the big one. You get pops and you got to have it in the pegging zone. We’re using lime at planting and gypsum at early bloom. But we’ve been testing a lot of other products. For a while there people said, “Well, I might not be able to get gypsum,” so we’re looking at things like calcium nitrate and polysulfate and all kinds of things as alternatives.
Mike Howell (22:14):
Are any of those showing promise?
Dr. Glen Harris (22:16):
Some of them will work, but they’re still usually not as good as 1,000 pounds of gypsum per acre, which is our standard recommendation that a lot of these guys do. So yeah, there are some things that can be helpful and they might have a fit where you’re borderline and you just want to make sure you have enough, so one of these products will do some good. But if you’re low in calcium… And when I say low, I mean below 500 pounds per acre, malic 1 in our case… 1,000 pounds of gypsum is definitely the way to go.
Mike Howell (22:45):
Dr. Harris, in your discussion there, you mentioned a couple of things that got me thinking. You mentioned potassium in peanuts and how we may need a little potassium and how peanuts can scavenge potassium. And earlier we talked about peanuts and cotton in the rotation, and a lot of times people will go a year of peanuts and a year of cotton or maybe two years of cotton in between that, depending on their setup. But could we be taking enough potassium out of these soils with the peanuts that that’s causing part of our problem in the cotton?
Dr. Glen Harris (23:11):
That’s definitely a possibility, and you add to the fact that… Probably the first question that raises is did you bale your peanut hay off? Because when you remove peanut hay, you’re taking a significant amount of potash off. And I have two slides my 29 years I probably show the most, are the value of chicken litter, N, P and K, but also the nutrients, the N, P and K removed and the value of that with peanut hay. Because I get calls all the time about, “Well, I want to replace it,” or, “I’m renting this land. I want this guy to replace it,” or, “How much am I really removing? Is it cost effective and all that?” It’s something to really think about. And you don’t take all the peanut hay off. A lot of those fine leaves stay behind, but you’re removing a significant amount of potash and that could cause a problem.
Mike Howell (23:59):
Right. And earlier in our cotton discussion, you mentioned the ratio for nitrogen and sulfur, and we don’t think about nitrogen in peanuts that much, being as they are a legume, but what about sulfur in peanuts, especially since we’re pushing these yields up higher and higher on peanuts? Have you done any work looking at sulfur in peanuts, and what’s that ratio look like in peanuts?
Dr. Glen Harris (24:19):
Yeah, I have, actually. Apparently, somebody came down to south Georgia not too long ago from Virginia and said all of our peanuts are sulfur deficient. And I’m like, “Really?” I just didn’t think they were. So I did a bunch of sulfur work. And, of course, if you put gypsum out, gypsum’s calcium sulfate, so you’re getting a good shot of sulfur there. I’ve put sulfur on the ground and I’ve sprayed sulfur and all that, and really apparently peanuts are a good scavenger sulfur out of the ground too. So I think it’s really pretty much should be a non-issue. Basically, we don’t have a recommendation for sulfur on a peanut. It’s a pretty good scavenger. We’re using a foliar sulfur spray for a fungicide, and I even looked at that, but that rate is pretty low, but I guess even if you needed a little, maybe that would work.
(25:04):
Believe it or not… And you can look at the nitrogen/sulfur ratio in the tissue just like you can with cotton, and I think what you’re going to find is it’s usually pretty good. We also have sulfur in our subsoils, that clay subsoil we have. Yeah, we’re sandy on top, but there’s sulfur down there. And a peanut is a deep tap rooted plant, so that all adds up to, believe it or not, I’m not too concerned with sulfur on a peanut.
Mike Howell (25:25):
Dr. Harris, we sure appreciate you taking the time to visit with us today. We’ve covered a lot of information, anything from nitrogen management in this cotton, potassium in cotton and peanuts. We’ve got a wealth of information from you today. Is there anything you want to leave our listeners with? Any take-home message before we move on?
Dr. Glen Harris (25:41):
Like you said, I do a lot of meetings, and this is the first time in my career we’ve had pretty high fertilizer prices two years in a row, and luckily I think a lot of people realize that you can’t make good crops without good fertilization. You need the soil tests, follow the recommendations, and stick to the plan is what I’ve been telling them. I don’t have any silver bullets. Doing things like we talked about, good pH and liming program, and splitting the nutrients, following the recommendations. It takes good fertilizer to make good yields, and fertilizing by realistic yield goals, I’m hoping we’re going to have another good year this year.
Mike Howell (26:14):
Dr. Harris, we sure appreciate it, and we sure hope that this information can help our growers get a better year in and make some good yields this year. Listeners, thanks for tuning in this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed this section on peanuts and cotton. And now we’ll transition and talk about our famous agronomist of the week.
(26:32):
Dr. Harris, this week in our famous agronomist section, I thought it was only fitting that since we talked a little bit about peanuts, that we mention the father of peanuts or who I think of as the father of peanuts, and that’s George Washington Carver. For our listeners, George Washington Carver was born as a slave near Diamond, Missouri on a farm. His exact birthdate is relatively unknown, but they think he was born sometime in 1864. But when he was an infant, some slave raiders came in and actually stole him from his farm there and resold him and his mother and sisters in Kentucky.
(27:05):
Now, his owner at the time was Moses Carver, and he sent out some people to look for him and they actually found George Washington Carver and returned him, and he and his brother were actually raised by the Carver family. Early on, his brother worked on the farm and did a lot of work on the farm, but George was a sickly child and wasn’t capable of doing that kind of work, so he stayed with Moses’ wife, Susan, around the house and learned to do a lot of the things around the house. Gardening was one of those chores that he was doing around the house, and he developed an interest in plants at that time.
(27:35):
At the age of 11, George left the farm and went to attend an all-Black school in a nearby town, but was disappointed with the education he was getting there, and moved to another town in Kansas and finished his high school there at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas. He applied to go to a junior college there and was accepted, but when they found out that he was a Black man, they actually refused to let him come on campus and he had to pursue his studies elsewhere.
(28:02):
George Washington Carver ended up now at what’s called Iowa State University. At the time it was Iowa State Agriculture School. He was the first African American in the history of the United States to earn a BS degree. His professor was so impressed with his work that he was doing on soybeans that he asked him to stay on and get a master’s degree. He did that, and when he completed his master’s degree, Booker T. Washington asked him to come to Tuskegee in Alabama. They had set up a program to work on agriculture at Tuskegee, and George Washington Carver took on that assignment and finished his career there.
(28:37):
Now, he’s most known for a lot of his inventions and work in peanuts, but he also did work with sweet potatoes and soybeans. He was focused on working on crops that low income people could work with, and those were the three main crops that he worked on. He had a lot of inventions and helped develop a lot of things, and one thing he gets credit for a lot of times is the development of peanut butter, but if you really get to studying, that is one that he actually didn’t work on. He did not discover peanut butter or invent peanut butter, among many of his inventions.
(29:05):
George Washington Carver was a great man. He did a lot to develop the peanut industry in the United States, and we owe a lot of gratitude to him for this. One of his most famous quotes, and I really like this, it says, “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong, because someday in your life you will have been in all of these.” I think that’s something we all need to take to heart.
(29:35):
Dr. Harris, do you have anything else you want to throw in about George Washington Carver? I know you’re there in the heart of peanut country.
Dr. Glen Harris (29:40):
Yeah, in fact, I mentioned Georgia’s number one in chickens in the country. We’re number one in peanuts too. We produce about 45% of all the peanuts in the country, so George Washington Carver’s pretty important to us, that’s for sure.
Mike Howell (29:53):
Okay. Well, listeners, we sure appreciate you tuning in this week. If you haven’t caught up on all of our episodes in the past, I encourage you to do that. And for more information on any of the topics we discussed today, you can go to www.nutrient-eKonomics with a K, dot com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
