Managing Nitrogen Losses Key for Next Year

University of Minnesota Extension Soil Scientist Jeff Strock says managing fertilizers will be important going into next year. “A lot of nitrogen was lost before any spring-applied nitrogen was put on and it wasn’t necessarily the fall-applied N that leached out. There was likely some residual N carryover from these last three years that may have come out of the profile.” Strock says practices are available that could prove more beneficial than just applying more nitrogen. “We’ve got bioreactors and saturated buffers, things like cover crops, in the entire field. There are practices out there that if we start seeing some of these losses, there are some things out there that we can do.”