BUILD A FERTILITY ROAD MAP

Tissue sampling offers an in-depth look at plant nutrition.

- Chelsea Dinterman

“Knowing what I know now, I would do it all again and foot the bill myself,” says Garret Igleheart, a farmer in Centertown, Kentucky. “We’ve gone from just thinking we were doing a good job, to having the raw data to prove it. We’re essentially playing a whole different game.”

In 2015, Igleheart joined a coalition of farmers trying a new tissue sampling protocol from AgriGold.

Tissue samples offer snapshots of a crop’s internal nutrition. Most farmers collect one-off tissue samples, hoping to diagnose perceived issues. But without a strategic plan, they could be leaving knowledge, and dollars, behind.

A yearlong commitment to routine tissue samples could provide a road map to better fertility management, says Josh Johnston, an agronomist for AgriGold.

Building the road map

The base tissue sampling protocol outlines six key occasions throughout the growing season based on growing degree units to collect samples. For a more detailed plan, AgriGold recommends weekly sample collections.

“My advice for any grower that would want to start tissue sampling would be to pull them once a week without making any modifications,” Johnston says. “Then, you can analyze that data through the winter and identify your shortcomings.”

It may be tempting to react to individual results and make applications in-season, but the real value is derived when all the data is compiled.

“At the end of the year, that grower has developed an outline of their nutrient flow for the course of the year on their farm, using their equipment with their fertility plan,” Johnston says.

With specific, time-stamped data, farmers can analyze how their crop used fertilizer applications, if at all.