by Steve McQueen, ALPINE Agronomy Manager
As we wrap up our 2022 harvest, we can look at recovery in many ways. First, we are usually physically drained, so we want to take some time to relax and recover our energy. Secondly, we can be mentally exhausted from all the decision making, alongside dealing with the wear and tear on equipment and ourselves, making it important to regain our life balance. We can then recover what we have witnessed and learned throughout the year, being data collection, gained experiences, and what we have observed from others.
By investigating what we have learned over the past year, we want to somehow be able to capture our knowledge and utilize it in making clearer decisions growing forward. I believe this is an area where we can always improve, and having focus group discussions amongst your own staff, as well as with your neighbours and trusted advisors can create greater value.
With ALPINE approaching our 50^th year serving the agricultural sector, we constantly gather data to support agronomic decisions. With the new ALPINE tagline, “Maximizing Fertilizer Efficiency®”, we continue to examine how to incorporate our ALPINE Bio-K® to increase a plants’ metabolism to recover soil nutrients more efficiently. Enhancing energy and recovery to work in unison, there are some interesting questions that we should consider as we improve on our 2022 knowledge and use it to design our 2023 cropping plan.

• How many opportunities of influence through the crop year did we take the time to assist our crops with stress recovery?
• How uniform was our germination and how quickly did our rhizosphere access our fertility zones to recovery our applied phosphorous?
• During our post herbicide application, how did our crops manage recovering from herbicide metabolism?
• Knowing the importance of a balanced ratio of N,P,K + Micros in a starter blend, have we looked at a balanced nutrient blend during top-dressing, side-dressing or y-Drop in wheat or corn, enhancing nitrogen use efficiency?
• Looking at tissue samples, how are we improving nutrient balance throughout the cropping year, to support balanced recovery of soil nutrients to improve quality and yield?
• When applying foliar fertility, do we consider how we can enhance microbial activity, so they can release and recover your soil nutrients?

Although these are only a few thoughts that are part of your nutritional crop planning process, they are worth considering. As you recover your 2022 ideas and set new goals for 2023, our ALPINE Sales Managers are here to support you with some great information on how ALPINE Bio-K can support your success from Start2Finish®.