Mike Howell (00:08):
… The Dirt with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podKast where I present the down-and-dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by eKonomics.com, farming’s go-to informational resource. I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research use and issues helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
(00:39):
Welcome back to The Dirt, everyone. We’re glad you’re tuning in this week. Things have warmed up. People are in the field. We’ve got a lot of corn that’s already coming up in some places and everybody else that doesn’t have the corn coming up is getting ready to plant the corn just any day now. Next thing in line is making those fertilizer applications. We thought we’d spend a few minutes today talking about making some fertilizer applications. Some people from time to time may be experimenting with mixing some different liquid fertilizer combinations and there’s all kind of problems that we can run into if we don’t know exactly what we’re doing. So to help us talk through this and make sure that nobody gets injured or creates a ticking time bomb there on their farm, we’ve got Dr. Karl Wyant. Karl is no stranger to The Dirt. Karl, if you will remind our listeners who you are and what you do, welcome back to The Dirt.
Dr. Karl Wyant (01:25):
Thank you, Mike. I am the director of agronomy here at Nutrien, and I have lots of experience with liquid fertilizers. I came up in the ag world in Arizona, California. We use tons of liquid fertilizer and one thing we also do is we mix and blend a lot of liquid fertilizers. I’ve learned some things the old-fashioned way through experience and making some interesting jar tests and we’ll talk about that. I’ve also had a lot of great experience getting both compatible blends out and safe blends out, so thanks for having me,
Mike Howell (01:56):
Karl, I couldn’t help think back to some of my chemistry classes in college and some of the things that we mixed together. We could make a mess with some of that stuff, and I’m sure they kind of regulated what was in that lab at all times, so we couldn’t blow the lab up if we wanted to, but we still had some pretty nasty concoctions in there. Let’s jump in and see if we can figure out how to mix these fertilizers safely. The first thing, I guess, we should talk about is what should people keep in mind as far as safety when they’re handling liquid fertilizers? Anything we do, we want to make sure we’re taking the proper safety precautions.
Dr. Karl Wyant (02:26):
That’s a great question. One piece with liquid fertilizers is there’s almost an endless amount of customization. You can take a soil report or a tissue report and you can make the blend that is perfect for that field and you can do it in a way that meets logistics and storageability challenges and it meets your growers equipment challenges. There’s a lot of positivity to liquid blends, but that’s also the challenge. There’s so many things out there on the shelf that you can mix together that you can very quickly go from a safe mixture to something that’s producing a hazardous byproduct, whether it’s heat or some sort of toxic gas like nitrogen dioxide gas, phosphine gas. I mean there’s some pretty nasty stuff you can make if you don’t take those precautions.
Mike Howell (03:09):
Okay, so what kind of precautions? I’m thinking PPE and that type stuff. Is there any personal protective equipment that somebody needs to make sure they have? If they’re going to be handling these products?
Dr. Karl Wyant (03:19):
That’s where you go to the product label or call up your ag retailer or the person that’s selling that particular fertilizer product and they can tell you, “Hey, here’s the best PPE to wear when handling this product.” And usually, if you’re going to make a blend, you need to wear the PPE based on the product that provides the most challenge in that blend. Stay safe, read that PPE, make sure you understand which product in the blend sequence is going to possibly give you the most challenges and then dress for that role accordingly.
Mike Howell (03:47):
Karl, what kind of issues could potentially happen if somebody were to mix these products incorrectly or mix incompatible fertilizer products?
Dr. Karl Wyant (03:55):
Well, let’s start with the incompatible part. There’s an easy way to do this. Go out to the shop and grab some liquid 10-34-0. And then grab some CAN-17, calcium fertilizer, and if you mix them together, you’ll quickly make the stuff that looks like toothpaste or cottage cheese and really what you’re making is the same stuff your bones are made out of calcium and phosphate come together. They form an insoluble precipitate, so that’s what we call an incompatible fertilizer.
(04:20):
I usually use that when I’m doing training on liquid fertilizer blending just so you can see what a mistake looks like. It’s a fairly safe mistake to make. It doesn’t make anything too nasty on the toxicity side, but it does make for this huge pain in the neck that you’ve got to go back and clean up. If you were to make a large batch, a thousand gallon tank of that stuff, you’re going to have a huge headache on your hands, and that’s something you really want to avoid. And one of the ways to learn that lesson is by trying to make blends and do jar tests and learn absolutely what doesn’t go together and what’s going to get you hollered at by a customer at 6:00 AM in the morning when they go to use the blend.
Mike Howell (04:52):
Okay, so you mentioned a jar test and a lot of people are familiar with doing jar tests when they’re looking at herbicides or insecticides or combining those two together, is it the same procedure to do a jar test with fertilizers?
Dr. Karl Wyant (05:04):
Yeah, that’s right. There’s so many things you can mix with. It’s like going to the restaurant. You’ve got the row of pops that you can put together. You can just sit there and make whatever you want. Same thing with a fertilizer blend. We have some information when it comes to basic liquid fertilizers like the 10-34-0s, UN-32s of the world, these liquid fertilizers that have been around a long time. What we don’t have a lot of information on is all the other stuff you could possibly blend in there, a liquid fulvic acid, a micronutrient package that I can go on and on. That’s where that jar test comes into play where you actually make a mock-up of your blend, and you just need to know the parts, five parts UN-32 for one part, maybe liquid boron that you’re putting in, and so you just make that mix by using your parts and your conversion.
(05:48):
I like to make an ounce one part. Then I can just add five ounces of you UN-32 and one ounce of my boron product in my example. Put those together in usually a cup size jar, and you make your batch at a very small scale and you observe what happens, so you need to observe what happens immediately. Does it make a bunch of toothpaste or cottage cheese? Does it generate some heat in the jar as you’re holding it? Does it bubble? Does it make some sort of gas? And then, you also need to observe it a week later, two weeks later, especially if it’s been exposed to some temperature changes, particularly on the cold side, so you can see does it fall out after time and does it create any sort of unforeseen headaches that you’re going to discover once that blend gets made at scale and goes out to the wider world.
Mike Howell (06:29):
The Dirt is your home for agronomic topics that boost your crop knowledge and profitability, but it only scratches the surface on what eKonomics has to offer. See for yourself why eKonomics is known as farming’s go-to information resource. Check it out at nutrien-eKonomics, with a K, .com. Okay, so Karl, we’re talking about blending different types of fertilizers together. Can we blend these fertilizers with different pesticides? Is that something that’s safe to do either herbicides or insecticides? I know, in my world, we’ll put out a lot of UAN solution on rye grass, and one of the common practices is to mix some 2,4-D in that to get rid of some broadleaf weeds. Is that a safe thing to do?
Dr. Karl Wyant (07:14):
I’ll give you the most typical agronomy answer. It depends. So your mixture of UN-32 with 2,4-D, that’ll work not an issue. However, if you got something like glyphosate and that glyphosate is really sensitive to other charged ions in the blend, let’s just say you add a bunch of magnesium or maybe a micronutrient package, you can actually take that fertilizer and tie up your glyphosate molecule, and then that would no longer work, so you can really cause some unforeseen issues if you just start throwing stuff together. That’s where doing your homework comes into play and having a good chat with your chemical rep on, “Hey, what’s the right mixing order? What’s the right thing to add? And how can I make sure that this is going to work?” So yes and no, Mike, and I hate to give such a wishy-washy answer, but that’s the world we’ll be living, right?
Mike Howell (07:57):
That’s exactly right. If it was all cut and dry, it wouldn’t be a challenge for us. Karl, one thing that a lot of growers are going to do is they’ll be putting out a herbicide application or something, and then they’ll have to clean that tank out and may use fertilizer in the same tank that they were putting out a herbicide or an insecticide. Talk about cleaning that tank and making sure that tank’s clean.
Dr. Karl Wyant (08:16):
Tank cleaning is such a necessary part of the maintenance, right? And it’s something that we all have to do, tank inspection, tank cleaning, especially if we want to extend the lives of those tanks and really make them work on our financial return. This is where a lot of trouble happens with tank cleaning, and I’ve got some personal experience with issues arising from improper tank cleaning and it was a challenge we had out here in California years back where there were some injuries occurring and it really kind of opened my eyes to this chemistry lab we’re running.
(08:44):
You said it earlier how we really need to pay attention and talk about liquid fertilizer safety and herbicide safety, take mixing safety in a big way. When it comes down to cleaning, this is where some trouble can happen, and that’s because you have your tanks and you go to clean it, and depending on what’s stored in that tank, if you’re going to use a tank, that’s maybe had some ammonia stored in it or aqua ammonia, and then you hit it with some bleach, because you want to make it real clean, that’s where we can have chlorine dioxide gas get generated, which is a lung irritant can cause fluid buildup in your lungs. It’s flammable and it can explode.
(09:18):
You also can have some production of chlorine gas, which is also a lung irritant, and if you let it go too far, you can actually make mustard gas, which is something that was used in World War I and can cause tremendous tissue damage and severe skin burns. So it’s a real challenge when it comes to cleaning. Before you go to clean your tank, I know that you got a whole laundry list of stuff to do that day, stop, pause, make a plan, talk to that tank dealer. They can really help you out with, “Hey, here’s how to clean this particular material, whether it’s stainless steel or some sort of plastic or something else,” and then you can also talk with your ag retailer to say, “Hey, if we stored this product in there, what’s the best cleaner that I can use, that really mitigates what I just mentioned,” those nasty gas byproducts that you don’t want.
Mike Howell (10:01):
Karl, there’s kind of adjuvants or things on the market that are designed to help with compatibility or adjusting pH and things like that. Are there any things like that that are going to help make tube fertilizers that aren’t compatible be more compatible?
Dr. Karl Wyant (10:15):
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a bunch of blend helpers out I’d like to call them, where you can take two products that might not go together super well just on their own, but you put in that adjuvant material and boom, all of a sudden, they’re together, and this is a lot of what formulators are using on the ag’s chemical supply side is that you’re not just getting the active ingredient or maybe that base fertilizer. You’re getting something that’s a lot more complete and unique, because they’ve been able to stick all the components together, because they’re using those adjuvants to help make the blend work in a way that just wouldn’t happen under normal circumstances.
Mike Howell (10:46):
So, Karl, it may have been you that was telling me the story about a guy that made a really nasty mix in his tank and released a gas and it actually knocked him out. He was unconscious there and the retail guy happened to drive up about that time. What should somebody do if they drive up and see a situation like that? The worst thing that could happen is for somebody to run right into it and then you have two victims instead of one. What kind of advice can you give somebody if they see something going on like that?
Dr. Karl Wyant (11:12):
Yeah, that was a similar situation, what I talked about earlier of having that personal experience. I was with the company when that event happened and our salesperson came up on the scene, and it was a bad situation. He immediately got the emergency services involved, recognized that situation, got the hazmat crew out there and was able to get that person a little bit away from the scene, got him into some cleaner, fresher air, but I think that’s where the training needs to happen. It’s like, “Hey, if you arrive on the scene and there’s a situation going on, what’s the right thing to do? Because you don’t want to just go into that confined space in the tank and expose yourself to maybe potential two people getting hurt.” There’s a lot weighing on these mixes we make, and I think we need to talk about the safety part, because things happen and that’s where this training and just acknowledging the fact that we can create some unforeseen byproducts if we don’t think about and do our homework on the planning side.
Mike Howell (12:05):
Now, Karl, I know that there’s a chart out there and there’s probably multiple charts out there that’ll tell you what fertilizers are compatible with others and which ones aren’t. Do you have a website or a place somebody can go and look for that information, maybe get a heads-up on what will mix with other fertilizers?
Dr. Karl Wyant (12:20):
Yeah, if you’re looking for a compatibility chart, there’s some really nice ones at the Fluid Fertilizer Foundation website. If you crack open that Western Fertilizer Handbook, you can see that there’s a big one for fluids and there’s another big one for dry fertilizers. It’s a really nice resources. We have a mini version published on the eKonomics website, and we also have an article on fertilizer safety that you can look at. So lots of good information on compatibility, and the jar test will reveal that as well if you do run into some issues, and then just having that relationship with your retailer or with your chemical rep say, “Hey, will this blend?” I think that’s a great question and a great place to start.
(12:57):
On the safety side, that’s where we got to do a little bit better of a job. As the industry is saying, the question is, is it compatible? But more is it compatible and safe? We have a great article on liquid fertilizer safety and there’s a nice table in there on fertilizer safety and some things not to do. I would encourage the listeners to check that link out when they get a chance.
Mike Howell (13:17):
A lot of great information you’ve shared with us today. Is there anything we may have missed before we wrap up for today?
Dr. Karl Wyant (13:23):
I don’t think we missed anything. I would just say again, start with a great plan and if you’re going to venture into making something new, have that plan. Consult the compatibility tables, consult that safety table that I mentioned on the eKonomics website and just make sure that you’ve got a good plan that can give you great information to move forward and make something that’s compatible and safe along the way.
Mike Howell (13:44):
All right, Karl, thanks for taking time to visit with us today. I know everybody’s got a lot out of this, and hopefully, we can avoid a mishap somewhere down the road this year. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed the first segment of today’s show. If you did, please take a minute and give us a rating on your favorite podcast channel or app, and give us some feedback as well. We want to hear from you to help make the show even better. And don’t keep it to yourself.
(14:07):
Please share these episodes with co-workers, family, friends, anyone you think may benefit from the information we’re sharing here. Don’t forget to visit our website, nutrien-eKonomics, with a K, .com to help find the latest crop nutrition news and research information as well as market updates, a growing degree day calculator, a nutrient use calculator, a rainfall tracker, and much, much more. It’s all at nutrien-eKonomics, with a K, .com.
(14:37):
Most episodes of The Dirt are now available for CCA credits. Visit our website and click on the agronomics tab to find these CCA credit opportunities. And if you have a question you can ask one of our agronomy team members, simply ask your question, and one of us will get back with you. Thanks for listening. Now segment two of The Dirt. Well, listeners, welcome back for our second segment today where we’re spotlighting another research farm. This week, we’re traveling to the great state of Arkansas, and we have with us today Dr. Jackie Lee. Dr. Lee, welcome to The Dirt.
Jackie Lee (15:13):
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Mike Howell (15:16):
Dr. Lee, if you will, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and tell us about the research farm that we’re going to be talking about today.
Jackie Lee (15:23):
I am an Arkansas native. I’m from near Dardanelle in Yell County. If anybody knows where that is, that’s a True Grit reference. I am also the first ever female farm director in Arkansas’ history or an experiment station. I have a PhD in entomology from University of Arkansas. I spent 10 years after I graduated working for industry at Oklahoma State University before a job opened in my home state, and I was sure glad to get back. I started out working in extension and I supported specialty crop growers, mainly focusing on pecans, blackberries, and peaches, and I helped growers out with developing strategies to manage insects, diseases, and to help with weed control. And the job opened up at the station two years after I was hired in Arkansas, and I’ve been the director here for about five years, and it’s been an interesting ride.
Mike Howell (16:35):
I bet it has. Tell us a little bit about the station, the name of the station, where it’s located, and what all research is going on there.
Jackie Lee (16:42):
This station is called the Fruit Research Station. It hasn’t always been named the Fruit Research Station. It was actually founded in 19 48, so we are 76 years old. We have quite the history. Our original property was located in Lamar, Arkansas, which that’s about 10 miles away from the current location. When it was founded, it was founded for Peach Research. This area of Arkansas and the River Valley back in the late 1800s, early 1900s had a very vibrant peach crop. There was a Gerber facility that was located here in the ’70s, so the peach industry here has a very long history. In 1959, I-40 was being built through Lamar, so we had to move the station. That’s when we purchased 40 acres on Red Lake Mountain, so we sat right at the foot of the Ozark Mountains, the most beautiful view you can imagine. We all say we get paid a salary, but we get a million dollar view. It makes it all worth it.
Mike Howell (18:03):
I have never had the opportunity to visit this station, but you’re talking me into making a road trip before very long. Love to come by and visit that.
Jackie Lee (18:10):
Yeah, and you get to eat some fruit, so that’s nice.
Mike Howell (18:14):
You mentioned that this is the Fruit Research Station. What all fruit are you doing research on there?
Jackie Lee (18:20):
Currently, we’re known for our breeding program. We have bred over 40 different fruit varieties. We’re most well-known for our blackberry breeding program. It is known worldwide. Almost every blackberry that you purchase from a grocery store is either from this farm, a variety we developed here or a variety that was developed by using one of our parents. We are very well-known for our blackberries. Another thing is if you’ve ever had a cotton candy grape, we have developed the parent that was used to breed cotton candy, grape. We have a lot of products out there that growers use and that consumers love.
Mike Howell (19:09):
Sounds great. Dr. Lee, I know it’s not just you there at the location. Tell us a little bit about the staff and how many people are working to help make this research station successful.
Jackie Lee (19:20):
We have 210 acres total. That’s a lot of acreage for a specialty crop farm. I know folks are used to talking about thousands of acres for field crops, but 210 acres is the largest specialty crop farm in Arkansas. Our second-largest farm is about 90 acres of blackberry production and that’s in white county to help pull off all of our breeding trials. And we also do production trials to help growers utilize the most up-to-date technology to grow fruit crops.
(19:58):
It takes a lot of work, and I have an amazing staff. There’s 12 full-time employees here. Myself, I have an administrative assistant. I have a full-time integrated pest management technician that puts together all of our insect disease and weed management programs and operates our air blast sprayers and all of our specialty sprayers. Fruit crops require a lot of maintenance. We don’t pull them out of the ground after harvest. We have to maintain them many, many, many years. So we also have three people that help us prepare ground and do all of the farmwork. I have a farm foreman and two farm crew, and then I have two research technicians that help maintain and keep all of the research going, and they each have a full-time support person. We don’t have any mechanized harvesters for anything we do, so I hire 10 to 15 people every summer to come and help harvest.
Mike Howell (21:07):
I can only imagine it takes quite a crew to harvest all of those. You’re talking about acres of blackberries, and I have a few bushes here in my yard, but it’s all I can do to keep up with a few bushes. I can’t imagine harvesting acres of blackberries.
Jackie Lee (21:21):
And blackberries ripen unevenly, so we have to harvest blackberries every other day to be very efficient and make sure nothing’s falling to the ground. It’s quite the chore. And then, besides the folks that work here full-time in the field season, we have 10 to 15 graduate students and about five scientists that are on site most every day during the field season.
Mike Howell (21:49):
Dr. Lee, we know that the importance of these stations is to get information out to the growers and most research stations have field days throughout the year to help get this information out to growers. Do y’all do field days during the year for growers to come by and visit and see the research that’s going on?
Jackie Lee (22:04):
We sure do. We hold quite a few meetings. We actually had one yesterday, and we have an annual fruit pruning workshop. And me and my staff train people in the field to prune muscadines grapes, blueberries, peaches, and blackberries, and we had great attendance. We had about 60 people. Most of them were growers and also the local wineries generally send their crews to learn how to prune.
Mike Howell (22:35):
Well, we really appreciate you joining us today and sharing all this information about the Fruit Research Station there in Arkansas. Do you have any closing comments you want to leave our listeners with before we wrap this segment up?
Jackie Lee (22:46):
Yeah, I would just like to say that this little town called Clarksville, Arkansas, and our research station has been very impactful to the fruit breeding world. That is just an amazing thing to be a part of and I’m very proud of that, of what we do, and I encourage everybody to go out there and eat some blackberries, some peaches, and some grapes.
Mike Howell (23:14):
Okay, well, I’ll put that on the shopping list for today. Dr. Lee, thanks a lot for joining us today, and listeners, we really appreciate you tuning in. As always, if you need more information on anything we’ve talked about today, you can visit our website. That’s nutrien-eKonomics, with a K, .com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
