Best Foliar Fertilizer For Cotton

Effect of method and time of potassium application on cotton lint yield better crops vol.

Best foliar fertilizer for cotton. Below are some general guidelines and rules of thumb to follow as you use foliar fertilizer to help you finish the season. Low volume not pivots. Not all nutrients feed well. Editor s note michael j.

With foliar feeding you either love it or hate it. Those plants will not take up foliar fertilizer until they get some oxygen and start recovering. The amount of water applied by pivot essentially washes the fertilizer off the leaves making this essentially a soil applied fertilizer. Foliar kno 3 applied at 5 to 7 day intervals resulted in significant yield increase over the untreated plots in 1995.

Jennifer and i have been getting questions about foliar feeding cotton. In most situations the best strategy to avoid k deficiency is to 1 soil test 2 apply the recommended k fertilizer at planting and 3 consider foliar feeding k during peak bloom. Foliar feeding general guidelines. Can i apply foliar fertilizer by pivot.

A valuable feature of petiole testing programs is that weekly sampling tracks nutrient level trends and allows the detection of deficiencies or excesses up to two weeks in advance. Don t feed when. Supplement to a good soil applied program. Petiole testing is the best way to tell whether you need to foliar feed cotton.

If you re managing 1 bale ac cotton the extra expense of foliar fertilization won t be worth it. In areas where you think the cotton is not severely stunted you may want to apply some foliar fertilizer to replace some leaching and de nitrification losses. And if the soil is saturated cotton will need to recover somewhat before it can effectively take up foliar applications. Mulvaney is a uf ifas cropping system specialist and glen harris is a uga soil specialist.

Recent work in central and gulf coast areas of texas has demonstrated the importance of cotton k nutrition spiegelhauer et al 2014. Preplant applications of k fertilizer and in some cases mid season foliar applications are effective in correcting deficiencies.