Ag Math

I was doing a little ag math this morning on the garden. I know my lbs per acre but converting that to lbs per square foot or part of an acre gets a lot of people confused.

I checked my figures with the boss, she is great at algebra. I said I spread 50 lbs of fertilizer on the garden and plant beds. I would guess I spred about 40 lbs on the garden alone.

I said the garden is 32 by 78. That is 2496 square feet or about 2500. Divide that by 43,560 square feet in an acre and you get .0573 or about .06 or 6 hundreths of an acre.

She said OK, 50 lbs. X .06=X : 1.

X= 50 divided by .06.

Figure that up!

That is 833 lbs per acre spread on the garden and the flower beds and the landscape trees.

Let's get a better number for the garden.

The estimated 40 lbs spread on .06 ac. equals 666.6 lbs per acre, still a lot!

I think I over fertilized a bit? About 13% of that was nitrogen so .13 times 666 equals 86 lbs per acre N so that is shy on the sweet corn, OK for every thing else but really not needed on legumes like peas and beans. So I will sidedress some more N on the sweet corn for a total of about 150 lbs. per acre, pretty common on corn farms regardless of type. The other nutrients are phosphorous and potassium so I really didn't over fertilize. My soil test results are low to sufficent, not excessive so I should be right in line.

I use ag math or farm math everyday.

I hope you do too!

Ed