By Darren Hefty: What if you could start over with a blank slate? That’s
the positive spin I’m putting on a new field I bought last summer. It’s a piece of ground that’s been cash rented for several decades. Since there’s little fertilizer, organic matter, and even topsoil left, I’m calling it the “Blank Slate.”

Since I began talking about this ground on Ag PhD and at our winter meetings, I’ve been getting asked repeatedly about what I’m going to do with this fi eld. From time to time I’ll discuss the long term goals and short term actions
we’re taking to bring this land up to the production levels we’re getting in the rest of our operation. Here are a few things we’re working on right now.

Short Term Actions:
1. Reduce tillage. My game plan is to use strip tillage to precision place nutrients with the least amount of tillage possible. This should keep fertility costs down and organic matter levels moving up. The challenge is we didn’t get it done last fall, so we’re working on getting a piece of equipment to do liquid in the spring.

2. Use a highly available liquid fertilizer as my primary source of nutrients this spring. We did not get fertilizer applied last fall, so this spring we’ll be using varying rates of Pro Germinator and Sure K to meet our P & K fertility needs.

3. Use micros and QuickRoots. Micronutrients are very important and unfortunately depleted in this field. QuickRoots will help my corn crop bring in micros, as well as many other nutrients. Since the soil life in this field is depleted due to high pH and low organic matter, QuickRoots will give an even better return on investment here than normal.

4. Ammonium Sulfate (AMS). I’m planning to have AMS broadcast on the ground to meet my sulfur needs and part of my nitrogen needs, but AMS does other things, as well. This fi eld has very high Calcium levels. When the Calcium chemically combines with the sulfate portion of the AMS, I’ll make my own gypsum. This should help improve soil tilth, infiltration of water, and allow for the fl ushing out of some of the carbonates and bicarbonates.

5. Spoon feed nitrogen. Since the cation exchange capacity in this fi eld on average is only around 15, the soil can only hold approximately 150 pounds of nitrogen at any one time. Therefore, since I’m trying to raise between 150 and 200 bushel corn, we’ll have to split-apply the nitrogen.

Long Term Goals:
1. Build Organic Matter levels. Organic matter does so many good things that I feel like INCREASING IT should be everyone’s #1 goal when the levels are low. Reducing tillage and growing high residue crops will help you build organic matter levels over time.

2. Apply manure. Adding manure is a great way to build fertility, get soil life going, and increase organic matter.

3. Tile. This ground needs tile to help reduce erosion and deal with water and pH issues.

4. Lower high soil pH. If we do the fi rst 3 things here (build O.M., use some manure, and tile), we’ll be well on our way to lowering that pH. We’ll plant corn here for about 20 years in a row, and between the organic acids released by the corn roots, as well as the nitrogen we’ll apply, we’re very confident that we’ll get the pH down to where it needs to be in time. All this will lead to…

5. Higher yields. We’ll get there eventually, but it’s not going to be easy in the beginning. Our goal, as farmers, is to be good stewards of the land. We’re much more concerned about the LONG-TERM health, What to do with new or depleted ground viability, and profi tability of this field than we are the short-term profits. Although we fully expect to make at least some money all along the way.