Liquid or anhydrous?

[r.reid]

Want to go to a one pass set up. Right now we knife in anhydrous before we seed. We have good results with this but we don`t want to have the 2 steps. Our air drill is a flexicoil 5000 with 7.2 inch spacing. Could a guy mount another row of shanks infront 14.4 inchs apart and still use anhydrous. Or would you just be better off to change openers and go with liquid? Has anyone ever compared the result of each?

[countryguy]

Two things you may want to consider.The first is I think 14 inch row spacing for anhydrous would be too much for a spring application.

The second thing is that it could be tricky to time things out for fills.You could end up sitting for hours waiting for a fill during a hectic spring,or longer if your supplier runs out of product.Possibly you could also end up having to fill the fert tank and air tank at different times and that could end up wasting alot of time.

The beauty of liquid is that you can have many days supply with on farm and in field storage and top up your bandwagon when the air cart is empty or vise versa.

Hope this helps some with your decision.

[poorboy]

Have you considered dry? At a lot of independent fertilizer dealers urea is cheaper than NH3 and liquid. Buy a used second air tank and put on the opposite end of your airdrill to increase your capacity. The atom jet single side band openers work very well for double shooting dry fertilizer or liquid.
Have you considered single shooting with a wider opener and putting all fertilizer with the seed? On 7 inch spacing you may be able to get away with it. Lots of concords on 10 inch spacing do that here.
Another option may be to change every 3 shank over to fertilizer and create a paired row system. Bourgault offers this on their 7 inch drill. You set it up so you have 2 rows of seed and then a row of fertilizer and 2 rows of seed, etc. This would require no more expense, same trash clearance, etc. Your gap would be 14" max, and I have lots of neighbors that run bourgaults 12.6" spaced drill with no problems. Put a slightly larger opener on the shanks and you will be happy. This way you could run NH3, dry , or liquid down a shank and have a packer behind for excellent ground sealing.
I have used NH3 midrow for 5 years with bourgault coulters, and it was ok because you could seed a lot of acres per fill and the product was delivered to you. Our service was excellent if you used your cell phone and had good comunication with your NH3 driver. The down side to NH3 for me was that in year when fertilizer prices were climbing weekly, I could preprice urea in october, but often couldn't price NH3 or liquid at all, I had to pay the high spring price.
You will notice a higher draft load if you put more shanks in the ground. Coulter style midrows have reduced draft and cut the straw so you have way better trash flow through your drill.

Where I live liquid fertilizer is way more expensive than the other fertilizer choices.

[r.reid]

Good idea but I think that 14 or even 12 inches is too far apart. You loose up to 2 bu/ac for every inch. 10 inches would be max for us. Is liquid still more money than anhydrous and dry combined? I keep hearing rumors that within the next 5 years anhydrous will be phased out totally.

[poorboy]

I would seriously doubt that NH3 will be totally outlawed in the next little while, but I do believe that with the safety laws, increased training, red tape, etc. getting tougher in all of life that the price of NH3 will rise to meet these costs. A lot of smaller dealers will probably get out of the business.

As to the yield dropping, by 2 bushels per extra inch wider spacing, I dispute that value completely. It depends greatly on your area, sunshine, rainfall, and most importantly your weed pressure. The more weeds you have, then definately the narrow row spacings are going to provide more yield.
Work out of alberta showed an increase in yield from increased seedbed utilization, but lots of studies from the great plains and Indian head, saskatchewan show opposite results. The difference I am sure is that in long term zero till fields you have a different result than in a normal field that has been zero till seeded for the first time. Most of the alberta work was not done on land that had been in a zero till rotation. A lot of it had even been completely cutivated the fall previous so that all trials were the same. This probably increased the wild oat pressure. As a 7 year zero till seeder, I can tell you that my wild oat pressure has dropped dramatically from when I used to fall fertilize, to now when I often don't even have to spray in crop for wild oats.
My neighbors have a 10 and a 12.6 inch spaced drill, and in 3 years of side by side seeding, the combine yield monitor shows a slight yield advantage to the 12.6 inch machine. It seems to vary back and forth a lot and no one spacing wins the yield competition every time.
Changing a 7.2 inch drill over to every third run for fertiler will actually average out to a 9.6 inch spacing, it just will resemble a paired row in that you will have 2 rows 7.2 inches apart and then a 14 inch gap and another 2 rows of seed. If you use a 3 or 4 inch opener you will cut that gap down to 10-11 inches, which is ok if you don't swath much(you can still swath is you seed on an angle). A lot of 12 inch drills like the conservapak seed with a 5/8" knife on 12 inch spacing, your modified drill would be narrower than that.
I takes a leap of faith to switch from a narrower spacing to a wider one. I personally, went from an 8 inch system to a 10" spacing because I was scared to go 12". It was a mistake. An 8" space will hold a nice swath up if you swath a lot, but a 10" space is poor at holding up a swath, really no better than a 12" spacing. The 10" pulls way harder than 12", disturbs more dirt which creates more weed growth and loses more moisture. It also costs more to buy all the extra openers and packers.
Good luck in your decisions and hopefully whatever you do grows you a bumper crop next year.

[r.reid]

Sounds like anhydrous will be the next "gun regulations". We use 7/8 inch openers on both the drill and the anhydrous cultivator. On top of regular sraying, the wheat all gets desicated before combining and we give the ground a shot of Round-up in the spring before we seed. Weeds are pretty much a thing of the past now thanks to this practice. But a one pass drill, no matter what technique it is, will be in the near future.