Land Application

Recommendations for collecting soil samples to ensure the quality results needed for good management decisions about fertilizer, manure and lime application rates.

Managing manure for economic and environmental benefit is based, in part, upon our ability to efficiently recycle manure nitrogen (N) between animals and crops. This article introduces University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) proposed changes in recommendations for crediting manure nitrogen in a crop’s fertility program.

One benefit of increasing soil organic matter is to store more water in your soil. Why does this happen? Because soil organic matter creates pores in a range of sizes. Exactly how much more water is stored due to soil organic matter will depend on soil texture, though. Animal manures are one option for increasing soil organic matter and soil health.

Difficult challenges in the dairy industry such as those resulting from COVID-19 result in times when a market is not available for milk. When those occur, using milk as a crop fertilizer may provide a short-term option for gaining some value from milk. This article will answer several questions about using milk as a fertilizer.

Extending the window for manure application offers many possible advantages. One can reduce some of the labor and equipment challenges associated with busy spring application windows as well as deliver nutrients to the crop more closely timed to the crop’s nutrient’s needs. Glen Arnold, Extension Specialist at Ohio State University recently met with a Nebraska audience to share field experiences in Ohio to side-dress manure into growing corn.

High rainfalls can leave holding ponds or manure storage full and operators looking for irrigation options for applying animal manure during the growing season. This article discusses important considerations for application of open lot holding pond effluent and diluted manures during the growing season without damaging the crop.

Animal manures can be a “valuable asset” or a “pain in the assets”. Understanding the agriculture community's perceptions of manure's benefits and barriers is important to recycling manure nutrients efficienty. A survey of 957 individuals from the U.S. and Canada is helping us understand the next steps to encouraging manure's use as a valuable asset.

Animal manures can be a valuable asset or a “pain in the assets”. During winter of 2020, 957 farmers and their advisors shared their perspective on the benefits and barriers to manure use. A previous article (part 1) focused on perceptions of manure’s benefits. This article (part 2) focuses on their perceptions of manure’s challenges that commonly become barriers to manure use in some fields and discusses strategies for preventing manure from becoming a “pain in the assets”.

Small but mighty, weed seeds in manure can be problematic when they result in overgrown, weedy fields after manure application. Some manures can be a source of these troublesome weed seeds. But, luckily, there are some measures that can be taken to reduce the viability of those weed seeds.

There are several ways seeds of Palmer amaranth can be introduced into your fields. Manure is one of them. This article provides some valuable answers on 1) reducing Palmer amaranth seed in feed, 2) reducing Palmer amaranth seed in manure; and 3) field application of contaminated manure.