The last of the Precision Nutrient Management winter crop harvest was wrapped up in Chickasha June 25.  Across the trial locations (Lahoma, Perkins, Chickasha, and Stillwater) the yields came in across the board in the high teens low twenties, bushel per acre.  For most of the trials there was very little treatment difference, often the check ( Zero N) was not far from the fertilized plots.  At this time the students are processing the grain.  Some will be sent to a NIR Spectrophotometer for protein analysis the rest will be ground and analyzed for nitrogen and mineral content.  The response to fertilizer was so low this year many of my trial areas have a double crop sorghum growing, in hopes to take advantage of the recent rains and harvest the residual nutrients.  While I am processing the data and the students are running the samples I thought I would share a few of the images from the 2014 harvest.  I will post results on the npk.okstate.edu as the become available and share the information on this blog.   The best way to learn when results are posted are to follow me on Twitter @OSU_NPK or subscribe to our Extension news list serve (send me an email at b.arnall@okstate.edu to be added to the listserv).

This harvest was spent watching the radar and going where the weather allowed.

Even a new machine needs a few in field “Modifications”

In this you can see the impact of fertility on freeze damage. The dark plots survived the freeze, the light did not and were full of smaller tiller heads. In the end no major yield differences.

The view from the driver seat of the Massey 8XP, with the Harvest Master on the right.

Even with a 5 ft header residue management is important.

While all plots are cut with the 8XP, for cleanup we borrowed a few Gleaners when available. I liked to say we started with Young and Cute and finished with Mature and Efficient.

To beat the rains all of us at OSU ran late nights and weekends.

When possible we like to let students get as much experience as possible. In this a Brazilian intern Luciano is learning to run the 8XP.