Spreading fertilizer on the wheat by the dawn’s early light.
We’re putting nitrogen on the wheat. It’s just breaking dormancy after a miserable winter. Weather conditions are absolutely perfect. We’re below freezing at night, so we can run the fertilizer trucks over the fields and not tear them up, and above freezing during the day, so the fertilizer will gently dissolve into the soil with the melting frost.
Once the wheat starts growing when it warms up[1] it’ll take up all that nitrogen and turn green and lush.
Unless it rains too much first, in which case all that nitrogen will end up in the Gulf of Mexico.
Seriously though, I worry about that and we take steps to mitigate it. We split apply our nitrogen. We’re only putting a portion of what we need on now and we’ll come back late in April and put the rest on.
That way if we do get a heavy rain we don’t lose too much. Losing N down the river hurts our pocketbooks[2] and hurts the environment.
And the nitrogen we apply now is in the ammonium form[3], so it is less likely to either volatilize into the air, or to leach out into the water.
Being green[4] just makes sense!
1. It is going to warm up someday, I’m sure of it.
2. That N ain’t cheap, I tell you what! I’m not entirely altruistic.
3. Ammonium Sulfate, 21-0-0-24S to be precise. Using this formulation isn’t all altruistic either. That 24S means we get 24 pounds of sulfur with every 100 pounds of product too, and sulfur is an essential ingredient for crop growth.
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