AgroLiquid’s LiberateCa® is a liquid fertilizer designed to prevent or correct calcium deficiency for all types of crops, in many different soil types.
On XtremeAg: Cutting the Curve Podcast, host Damian Mason spoke with XtremeAg founding member Kelly Garrett and AgroLiquid sales account manager Aarron Stahl about their experience with LiberateCa.
This season, AgroLiquid and Kelly Garrett are conducting research in 40-acre test plots, in different soil types.
Part of the impetus for this research was that Garrett was dealing with insoluble calcium issues, which were a limiting growth factor.
Calcium bully
“In our soils, calcium can be the most prevalent nutrient, and it has double positive charge. It’s a bully in the soil, because it ties up all the other nutrients, because it’s trying to get neutral,” Garrett said. “It’s my biggest limiting factor.”
After tissue sampling, Garrett was surprised to learn that even though he had prevalent calcium in the soil, he was still calcium-deficient, since it was insoluble.
Garrett shared a very personal account of where AgroLiquid LiberateCa made a difference for his crop.
In 2017, Garrett was growing soybeans, and he had 110,000 stand count with an average of 162 pods on every plant. A bad storm came in, the soybeans laid down, and they aborted half the pods. When they stood back up, they had 80 only pods, and they made 88 bushel.
“It was devastating to me,” Garrett said. “I thought here I was going to have way over 100 bushel beans…I had it, but we couldn’t harvest it, so it doesn’t count.”
He then tried to plant early soybeans under irrigation, and he thought he had 100 bushel again, but only got 80. The problem was that the branches got so heavy they couldn’t support themselves, and they laid down.
“We put LiberateCa into our program, and we ran a trial…just touching the plants and pushing on the branches, the skeletal strength was remarkable,” Garrett said. “The different was remarkable, and it’s a grower standard practice now.”
During the trials, along with using LiberateCa, they are going to aim to finish out the later pods, push nitrogen and Sure-K, and work with the vascular system to translocate nutrients.
Backbone
LiberateCa is the backbone that allows the other nutrients to spread across the plant and supports a better harvest.
Other benefits include:
• Correcting or preventing calcium deficiency, stunted growth, and reduced yields
• Promoting strong plant cell growth
• Improving resistance to stress, drought, and disease
• Balancing soil salinity
• Improving water penetration through soil
• Easily apply at planting or throughout the growing season
• Easily apply with other nutrients
Overall, it has an average ROI of $31.36/A.
Real-world application
Calcium is a valuable tool for growers to maximize the health and productivity of their crops. Like Kelly Garrett saw on his fields, even though the soil has calcium, it isn’t always readily available. With LiberateCa™, you can make the most of your resources.
Talk to your AgroLiquid representative about LiberateCa™ to see how you can increase your yields.