When applying mineral nutrition, it is very important to follow all agronomic laws and regulations. Hundreds of years of work by the smartest people on Earth were spent on understanding the laws of the behavior of nutrients in the soil, in the plant, their interaction in solutions, and based on this knowledge, to develop the basic principles of which fertilizers, when and how can be applied, and what not to do trace. And every self-respecting agronomist should know these rules. In order to adhere to them. And also in order to know in which cases these rules can or must be violated. After all, there are no rules without exceptions. Let's consider them in order.

RULE 1. PHOSPHORUS AND POTASSIUM FERTILIZERS ARE APPLIED UNDER MAIN TILLAGE FROM AUTUMN

This is very correct, because in most soils these nutrients are extremely immobile, and if they are scattered on the surface or buried not deeply, then they simply will not be available to plants in the current season (although they will not go anywhere, but we will need them next year after they are plowed). Exceptions to this rule are as follows.

Application with sowing. Local application with sowing (a little deeper than the seeds) makes it possible to use these fertilizers more rationally, especially on crops of wide-row cultivation schemes, and in addition to provide plants with nutrition in the very first days of life, when the root system is still weak. Usually, only a part of the total phosphorus requirement is applied to the post-sowing application (and with an acute potassium deficiency, it too), but there are technologies where plowing is not provided at all (for example, No-till), and there, during sowing, it is often necessary to give the entire norm of phosphorus and potash fertilizers.

Applying tape before cutting ridges or ridges with milling ridge formers. This exception is recommended to absolutely everyone who uses the technology of cultivation on high beds and ridges. Moreover, both on vegetables and in gardens.

Scheduled application in small doses throughout the season through the fertigation system. This is an ideal method for those who have such a system; it is most effective precisely on underground drip irrigation systems.

RULE 2. NITROGEN FERTILIZERS ARE INTRODUCED EARLY IN SPRING ("UNDER GROWTH")

This can be the introduction of frozen soil for winter crops and No-till, the introduction of pre-sowing cultivation for spring crops (depending on the total estimated dose and moisture supply of the region in the pre-sowing application, you can give from 30% to the full dose of nitrogen). Of course, this is all very correct. Indeed, when introduced in the fall, it is possible to wash out a significant part of nitrogen due to winter precipitation. And the delay with the introduction of nitrogen fertilizers leads to an exacerbation of the harmful effects of drought and to the risks of accumulation of nitrates in the product (since nitrates take time to become amino acids and proteins through successive transformations within the plant). It's all right, but not always.

Nitrogen in ammonium form (ammonia water and anhydrous ammonia), of course, is introduced in the fall. First, ammonium nitrogen is not as easily washed out as nitrate; secondly, large single doses of ammonium in the soil are deadly for soil microflora and seedlings of some crops. Therefore, it is much more correct to make it much earlier, so that microorganisms have time to partially convert ammonium into other, safer forms.

In the fields with drip irrigation on all cultures without exception, nitrogen, of course, is introduced "by a teaspoon per hour" by the same excellent method - fertigation. Of course, not just grinding the dose evenly throughout the season, but focusing it on the dynamics of assimilation of this element of nutrition by the plant.

RULE 3. WITH A SYSTEM OF FERTILISATION, YOU SHOULD NOT RESORT TO BASIC OR PRIOR APPLICATION SPRAYING AT ALL

It’s a very wise law. And it’s because fertilization is the most cost-effective way to use mineral fertilizers, minimizing their loss through leaching and evaporation and moving to unattainable compounds in the soil. In addition, during the fertilization, there is no sudden increase in salt concentration in the soil (as it is with single-crop feeding, for example, from three to four hundred kilograms of some ammonium nitrate). However, this wise rule should be able to break in time. Consider the options.

Soil analysis and calculation of nutrient requirements for your crop showed the need for a high dose of potassium. And of all the potassium fertilizer you have only potassium salt. (And potassium salt, if anyone doesn’t know it, is a mixture of KCl and NaCl, so there’s chlorine here and chlorine there). And if your crop is chlorine-sensitive (cucumbers, melons, potatoes, etc.), you don’t have to make it suffer chronically from chlorine poisoning all season. You just need to break the above rule and make 2/3 doses of potassium salt in autumn for plowing. Chlorine is easily removed from the soil, and by spring you will have very little left (while potassium will go nowhere and be used by your plants).

Or if you don’t have water in your field in the first few days after planting. There are many such cases. Almost all of our farmers on the waters of the North Crimean Canal get water in late April, while the onion is planted in early March or even in "February windows."

Then, of course, you should not try to use this dangerous substance in your fertilisation (and thereby destroy your drip system) or look for someone who can sell it at a discount. It is better to find this "wrong fertilizer" in the electricity system, when its lack will be essentially its advantage - to make seed/ planting crop in a traditional way.

VALUE 4. ONLY SPECIAL "WATER-SOLUBLE" FERTILIZERS SHOULD BE USED FOR FERTERIZATION

God has laid this rule on you to break! If you use fertilizer that contains ballast, insoluble fermenting impurities, then you’ll definitely clog your droplets, and the crop loss will be several times what you’ve already saved, For example, using amphos instead of ortho-phosphoric acid.

But this, of course, does not apply to those who have an additional protective filter on the injector, and the drip irrigation system itself was equipped with a collector pipe and put simple, Reliable and inexpensive Baccarat automatic washer valve on its end. Such farmers can safely use for both the fertilisation and calymagnosia, as well as amphoe or superphosphate. The active substance of these fertilizers will be safely dissolved and enter the irrigation system, after the completion of the cycle of fertilizer from it will be removed. But fine particles will pass through the filter? And already in the tube they can get stuck together, which means that they can gradually block drops? They can. But not you. After all, you have a collector’s pipe and "Bakkarat," which washes your drip every day and doesn’t allow any conglomerates to form. So the money you spend on this wonderful device is going back to you a hundred times not just by extending the life of every drop, It’s also because of the ability to save significantly on the kind of fertilizer.