Time to spread the Gold’?!

I personally, always rather spread fertiliser or slurry in the rain or Just after the rain.

I rather have them hitting a damp grass and melting straight away, rather than putting out on dry hard ground, and a heavy downpour, run all into the drains.

I personally would wait till Monday.

I'd be spreading for the rain unless there's a monsoon forecast

Be interesting to see if there is any change in water quality stats after this spring.

lads being very cautious with all lads I’ve been chatting with spreading less and being more careful with it too.

same for slurry, much more talk of little and often.

would always try avoid spreading with a full day heavy rain forecast after a dry spell.

If we get a dry summer, we'll have high soil nitrogen mineralisation regardless and flushing the following autumn. It's a bit early for high biology activity yet to get that soil nitrogen up unless one has been actively feeding and building that biology up.

So you could have spread zero nitrogen but a dry summer to crack open the soil, release carbon and then the weather gets cooler and wetter and there's a flush of nitrogen into groundwater.

This is partly why you see high nitrate release in continental europe. We have still the 2nd best water quality in europe. Finland I believe is number 1. Even there though there's critics of their tillage systems the same as our pastoral systems here.

Nitrogen and Carbon are life. Both come from the air we breathe. Wash away or and go back to the air we breathe again.

A neighbour (ish) to me would have been fairly on the ball with soil samples I'd say every year.

We are in an extremely naturally low phosphorus area. Indexes for most come in at 2 no matter what they spread. I've some coming in at 1. Even some at half.

Anyway they were coming in at 2 every year. After the 2018 drought they went up to 3. Years after back to 2. Same amount of P spread every year.

Other farmers on the Web say they've an increase in soil P just by helping biology.

Nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, boron, sodium, are the most soluble nutrients going.

I have thought about it. That's as far as my research went.

The phosphorus in fertiliser comes from mines too.

The rock phosphate is just supposed to be slower acting and longer lasting. Favoured in forestry. I think if you were using it you'd still have to put a bit out every year.

Basic slag might be a better option. Rock phosphate is suitable for acidic soils i.e. low pH. It's slow acting as P is locked in the mineral which decomposes slowly to release the P. Better stick to the superphosphate 16%.

We've been putting out 8 - 12 units N/acre in each application during the summer the last 2 or 3yrs , It's great for maintaining quality without driving the grass mad. We don't want to have to make silage so it's a fine line between enough grass and too much.

Buy a vidbag or some other big bag dispenser. They're a handy job