Fertilizer Budgeting
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In the TSM_® program, growers can be in control of their fertilizer dollars budgeted. This budget is the best possible compromise between funds avaialable and optimum fertility. To achieve this compromise, our budgets are geared to 25 pounds per acre increments.
 

Our budgets vary according to ROI (Return on Investment) not cutting rates across the board!

The speed at which soil fertility achieves "balance" can be controlled by available funds. If a grower wishes to achieve "fertility balance" quickly, simply increase the amount of funds available to spend on fertilizer.

If a grower is on rented land and funds are less available, the amount spent on fertilizer may be decreased, but understand it will take longer to achieve "fertility balance" and if the amount of fertilizer is small enough, you may not be able to reach "fertility balance" at all.

When figuring a fertilizer budget in the TSM_® program, remember that the TSM_® program recommends fertilizing every crop every year. Also consider a liming program using "pelletized lime" as being a part of your annual fertilizer budget. We do not recommend that you include your nitrogen needs in this annual fertilizer budget because nitrogen rates should be determined by (1) plant population, (2) variety, (3) soil type, (4) organic matter and etc.
 

Since nitrogen is released from organic matter each year,
how can you determine just how much nitrogen is released?
Contact us about our "NRx" program.
We can tell you how much nitrogen is released so you can reduce
nitrogen aplication accordingly. SAVE MONEY!!
 

Let me explain what goes into making a fertilizer budget. We take into consideration two very important factors when developing a fertilizer budget:
 

1. "Fertilizer Index - Pounbds Needed to Bakance" - just how far from "balance" are we?

2. "Crop" - since we don't fertilize all crops with the same amount of fertilizer, we need to move our budget up and down according. We recognize four different groups of crops. Crop code #1 would be like "corn", crop code #2 would be like "soybeans", crop code #3 would be like "wheat" and crop code #4 would be like "alfalfa". I have given you the entire list below:

The importance of this crop code" system is that you can adjust your budget giving up only the "lowest" return on fertilizer investment. This is accomplished through using the "Fertilizer Index - Pounds Needed to Balance".

The "Fertilizer Index - Pounds Needed to Balance" is a key player in budgeting. The chart above indicates how the amount of fertilizer is determined per acre using the "Fertilizer Index". I have used "Budget E" as the example since this is our preferred budget. 

The "Fertilizer Index" is fugured using only phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). We take a soil test score for phosphorus and determine what an ideal soil test score for phosphorus (P) should be given all the agronomy factors. We then do the same for potassium (K). We take the ideal scores and subtract the actual soil test score and this gives us the "Fertilizer index" for each nutrient. We add the fertilizer index for P and the fertilizer index for K giving us the "Fertilizer Index - Pounds Needed to Balance". A negative number means the fertility is lower than desired. A positive number means we have excess fertility (typical of farm using manure).

We have budgets ranging from "A" through "M" all just 25 pounds of fertilizer per acre apart. If a grower is undecided which budget he needs to use, just look at the research data we have on three of the budgets (budget "A", Budget "E" and Budget "I"). Budget "A" has 100 pounds of fertilizer more applied than Budget "E". Budget "I" has 100 pounds less fertilizer being applied than Budget "E". Again, the preferred budget is "Budget E".