The 34th North Central Extension-Industry Soil Fertility Conference

Each year, Extension personnel, and ag-professionals from the states in the North Central region meet at a 2-day conference in November to share results of research, describe experiences from the past growing season, and share ideas. For 2004, the conference will be held at the Holiday Inn Airport at Des Moines, IA on November 17 and 18.

The program begins at 1:00 pm on November 17 and ends at 12:00 noon on November 18. There should be at least 6.0 CEU’s approved for this conference.

Some topics on the 2004 program are:

• Developing N Recommendation Systems
• Fertilizer Placement in Fall Strip Tillage
• Foliar Application of K on Soybeans
• Corn, Soybean, and Alfalfa Response to Dolomitic and Calcitic Lime

There will be others as well as poster presentations. There will be a lot of good information presented in a short period of time.

Room reservations can be made by calling the Holiday Inn, Airport (515) 287-2400. The rate goes up if reservations are made after October 27, 2004

Registration for the conference is $125. To register, call Phyllis Pates at (605) 692-6280. She can also provide a more detailed program if you need that before you make a decision.

U of M Fertilizer Recommendations and Soil Fertility Info Now in One Place

In the past, it’s been difficult, if not impossible, for people to find an electronic version of University of Minnesota fertilizer recommendations and other related soil fertility information. That’s changed. It’s now easy to get to that information. It’s located at the web site for the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate.

Rather than getting lost in the confusing, disorganized, maze of the Extension web site, there are three easy steps to get to this information. These are:

1. Find the home page, www.soils.umn.edu
2. Click on Extension and Outreach
3. Click on Publications

All recent Extension publications are listed. If you wish, you can print any that are of interest to you.

Help is Needed

For many years, we’ve relied on the cooperation of many, many farmers who allow us to put research plots in their fields. That cooperative spirit of those who’ve participated is appreciated very much. We’re looking for help, again for 2005.

To date, we’ve identified needs for fields with the following characteristics.

1. Fields with a low soil test for zinc (in the range of 0.5 ppm). We need at least one field that will be planted to corn and one field that will be planted to dry edible beans.
2. Fields with high soil test values for phosphorus and potassium. Two fields (one fine textured soil, one irrigated sand) will be planted to corn in 2005. One field (fine textured soil) will be planted to soybeans in 2005.

In all cases we ask the farmer to do the tillage. We take care of the plot area until harvest. The area needed for each study is approximately 1 acre. Please let me know (612.625.6210 or grehm@umn.edu) if you know of fields that have these characteristics.