As a producer you know your crop is only as good as your soil. When things go awry, whether with nutrient profile or soil structure it is often due to high salt densities and as a result yields suffer. Area producers are finding a new product, Calcine®, to be particularly helpful in getting productivity in these fields back in the green. “We are about one to one and a half leaves further ahead and our stand counts are probably four or five beets more per 100 feet of row, which is tremendous,” said Gary Wagner, a local farmer. “We also saw plants are growing faster and healthier. Those things are giving us encouragement.” Just a year earlier Wagner was facing high salt levels in several of his fields, which was inhibiting growth of his crops. Conversations with his distributor, Jim Erickson, led him to a unique solution. “Calcine® is a mix of proteins, enzymes and natural acids that releases calcium from the soil matrix so it can help leach salt from the soil, which can significantly improve soil health and production,” Larry Mohr, developer of Calcine® said. “It’s been successfully used for more than 20 years in the golf industry. We’re excited to see it helping producers in the Midwest.”

Increasing sugar content in sugar beets has always been a challenge for sugar beet growers. Over the past two years we have seen the challenge become easier to overcome. The use of Aqua-Yield® NanoK® on sugar beets during other spray applications has shown to increase sugar by as much as .75 points in two years of trial work in Elbow Lake, MN. The producer has seen this increase by adding NanoK ^® to the spray tank with the last herbicide application and at least one or two applications during Cercospora spraying. The highly available Nano particles of potassium get into the plant leaves very quickly following application because of the small size of the particle. The payback for the producer has been a $17 investment and a return per acre of over $100 for the additional sugar harvest. Potassium has long shown to have a positive influence on sugar in most crops and now in sugar beets.

Contact your Aqua-Yield representative for recommendations on how we can maximize sugar and your bottom line by using NanoK ^®

Interested in Calcine? Contact:
Tom Vander Heiden, ST Biologicals: 952-378-0518

 Jim Erickson, Erickson Custom Operations: 701-371-7184

L-R: Jim Erickson (Erickson Custom Operations), Tom Vander Heiden (ST Biologicals), and local farmer Gary Wagner.