Ingenuity

Source from:  tobaccofarmer.com By Rocky Womack  06/07/2004

Grower rigs a more efficient way to apply liquid nitrogen. The year 2003 was a fertilizer leaching nightmare for many North Carolina tobacco growers. Every time they added more nitrogen, it would rain again, depleting what they had added and requiring them to add more. However, adding the extra nitrogen wasn't always as effective as it could have been, not necessarily because of the rains, but because of the way it had been applied. A BRIGHT IDEA From the second week in April, when he set, to July 15, 2003, Duplin County, N.C., grower Max Turner's crop received 50 inches of rain. More often than not, about 5 inches of the rain would fall at one time, which was a sure way of depleting fertilizer applied early in the season. [img border=0 hspace="4" vspace="4" align="left" src=http://www.tobaccochina.com/english/picture/images4.jpg] "The tobacco was yellow at the bottom, and the top half was still green," Turner says. "It looked like it was fixing to burn up on me." Turner knew he must do something to save his crop. He started adding more nitrogen to the original 82 units first applied. To apply the extra nitrogen, he first used a Hi-Boy type of sprayer with drop nozzles, but this didn't seem to work as efficiently as he would have liked. Putting his ingenuity to good use, Turner rigged up a spraying system on his tobacco harvester so he could harvest bottom leaves and apply liquid nitrogen to the plants' roots where it was needed. He applied nitrogen in sandy places where it was needed more because of leaching, but turned off the spraying system in the field bottoms where rains had washed the existing fertilizer. Within weeks, Turner noticed a difference in his tobacco, as if it had come to life again. HOW HE RIGGED IT Turner attached a 12-volt electric motor similar to what is found on lawn sprayers to his harvester. The motor is capable of applying 45 pounds of pressure. A pump attached to the motor can pump 2.5 gallons of liquid per minute. Turner attached the motor and pump atop a plastic 25-gallon tank that holds the liquid nitrogen. He hooked the container behind the center conveyor of his two-row harvester. At the bottom of the container he attached two spray nozzles, one on each side of the container. At 5 pounds of pressure, these nozzles spray out 6 units of liquid nitrogen, and at 9 pounds of pressure they put out 10 units of liquid nitrogen. Turner found the system he devised saved money and more directly applied the nitrogen to the plants' roots. "It cost less than $2 an acre to get 8 more units [of nitrogen]," Turner says. "It's been the most economical thing I could have done." On his 2003 tobacco that didn't drown, Turner averaged between 2,200 pounds and 3,000 pounds per acre. It could have been worse. Luckily, he tended 28 different farms in Duplin and Lenoir counties, where rainfall totals varied and so did the damage. "I had a few farms where the tobacco just drowned," Turner says. "Tobacco drooped and wilted and wouldn't grow. There were a few farms I didn't make my pounds on." Turner believes without his rigged sprayer system, he would not have made as good a crop as he did. "It helped the tobacco that didn't have quite enough nitrogen to make the plant fill out," he says. "When I came back [through the field] a second time, I could tell I had a more uniform crop." He does not plan to let his innovation sit idle next year. "I think it will help me every year," he says. RESULTS By applying his ingenuity and common sense, Turner saved some of his crop from the damage caused by heavy leaching. Had he not acted quickly, he would not have harvested what he did. His quick thinking to add more nitrogen using an innovation of his own saved his crop from totally leaching out. Enditem