12 Days of Nutrients: Day 9 - Iron
December 21, 2021
Our 12-day series focuses on the 12 days of nutrients and we are so excited to share not only about macros and micros but are going to delve deep into agricultural science and what it can do to better our yields. You shouldn’t miss this series, so listen, learn, and apply! It’s Day 9 today and we are going to deal with all things related to Iron! Let’s go … 😉
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Day 5 Transcripts ✨
[00:00:17] Rod: Happy holidays from A Better Way to Farm, where we help farmers improve their yields and increase their profits. It is the 12 days of nutrients. Today is day nine and we're on iron. So let's talk about what we know about iron. Now, where I live we know that we got way too much of it. We used to joke that we had to quit ploughing here because the iron would build up on the shears and you couldn't pull it anymore. It wasn't really quite that bad, but it was close.
[00:00:42] We just have an astronomical amount of iron and that creates problems of all kinds. It ties up phosphorus. It makes other things not work as well and so that's the world we live. What does iron do? It's important because it does things such as promote formation of chlorophyll. It is an oxygen carrier so it gets oxygen into that plant, which is important. It's important for cell division. Calcium gives cell walls structure, gives them strength but iron promotes adequate cell division. We know that when we have really high pH, we struggle with iron chlorosis. We know that the higher the pH gets, the less the availability of iron, and that lends itself to a lot of issues for the people who are in that realm of fighting that.
[00:01:30] Excessive phosphorus can trigger iron deficiencies and acid soil, so if you live where I live and we fight the acidic and we have to put on lime and you have put on too much phosphorous. That in and of itself will create an iron deficiency. And it's funny because I looked at a soil test yesterday for some friends of mine in Wisconsin and they had been putting on a lot of nutrients and a lot of manure and their P one test, I believe was 84 parts per million. And so I just took my ink pen and I wrote stop it, right there. Because they have phosphorus levels that were so high, that they was going to be tying up iron and tying up other things, hurting zinc levels in the plant. So there was a lot of issues that are surrounding that. And there is a point in time guys where we need to quit putting on phosphorus if we get high enough, because if we have that excess of phosphate, we trigger an iron deficiency. That is not a good thing.
[00:02:26] We know that any time we get the pH to seven and a half, we are probably in trouble. That creates that deficiency right there. How do we handle it? What do we do? Well, first of all, we want to see there's probably yield loss if you have less than 100 parts per million of iron. That would be, in the ideal level according to everything I can read and study was 200. So we'd like to have 200 parts per million. We know at a hundred, we're starting to trigger yield loss. The trouble with that is, is that iron chlorosis isn't visible to the eye until somewhere when the iron level gets down below 75, or maybe you may not even see it until it gets below 50.
[00:03:06] The point is this. By the time we see visible signs of iron deficiency, we have lost significant yield. So, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to fix it? How are we going to work on it? Well, we can't put a chelated iron in the seed trench. It has to be chelated, it has to be 100% protected, or it's going to tie up with the phosphorus and the high pH that you already have. It's just going to grab onto it, rendered unavailable, and so that will work. Probably a better choice in this instance is as a foliar.
[00:03:40] Everything that I read, everything that I could find said two things. One, iron and manganese work together and they're very important. That would make sense. It makes that plant dark green, that improves photosynthesis that makes us do a better job of producing fruit. Two, the thing that everybody agreed upon. No matter which one of the books I was looking in, was that iron is always best applied as a foliar feed. That we can put it on after the plant is up, foliar feed it straight into the plant and get the best results.
[00:04:11] Guys, it's a nutrient that is often overlooked. A lot of people don't think anything about it, but the fact of the matter is we should, and we want to make sure we're doing the right thing here. You guys know it's never wrong to do the right thing. So I would encourage you to pull out those soil tests and take a look and see if you need iron. Are you below 200 parts per million? Are you fighting high pH and therefore we're rendering it unavailable. Are you fighting iron chlorosis that you can visually see? Because if you do, next year we want to get after it before the deficiency appears.
[00:04:44] Guys, we love what we do. We love being a little bitty part of your life. Thank you for tuning in. I want to encourage you to slip over and listen to the podcast platform at A Better Way to Farm. You can swing by and go to abetterwaytofarm.com and fill out the profit calculator. And if you find value in what we do, please share this with a friend. We would appreciate that so much. And if you have any reason to reach out, if you'd like to talk about the fundamentals of agronomy programs, we're going to be doing here between now and Christmas, or you would like more information on iron, give us a call 6 4 1 9 1 9 1 2 0 6 or you can send us a text at the same number or feel free to get us a message right here on the Facebook page. Guys, I hope that this day is going well for you. I hope you have the merriest of Christmases, and I hope that you really are having a better day.
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