Off Andy went back to his family farm near Wyoming, Iowa to work on a little water quality project with his dad, Guy, and the folks from Verdesian Life Sciences. Mark Siepel and Dave Schwartz from Verdesian are on the right with Andrew Kilburg with Encirca Services, who will do the testing and data analysis, looking on.
Kevin Bodensteiner with Verdesian joining in as well, as the tank on the planter is filled with UAN liquid 32 percent Nitrogen fertilizer WITHOUT the NitriSphere-N stabilizer.
It's loaded and ready to go as Guy hops up behind the wheel:
The first step is to plant some strips, one planter-width wide, with plain UAN 32 percent fertilizer applied:
You can see those strips here:
Listen for more specifics from Dave Schwartz and Kevin Bodensteiner with Verdesian Life Sciences here:
It's a no-till operation into bean stubble with the same variety of seed in the planter:
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With the initial strips planter, Andy dumps in the NutriSphere-N Stabilizer from Verdesian:
Back out goes the planter to fill in the strips:
This time with Andy at the wheel:
A little lunch never hurts either and to celebrate May Beef Month the guys were grilling up burgers on the tailgate:
By planting side-by-side, in the same field, on the same day with the same hybrid it eliminates a lot of the variables and effectively isolates the only variable as the NutriSphere-N stabilizer. We'll head back out to the field several times during the growing season to take a look at how the corn is growing and notice any difference in plant health. Plus, Andrew will pull soil samples around tassle time to gauge the amount of nitrogen left in the soil in what form so we know how much more stayed put and out of the rivers and streams. Plus, we'll compare the yield data on the strips to NitriSphere-N with the strips without to find out how much of more money is winding up in the producer's pocket so, as they say, STAY TUNED!