Nitrogen On Soybeans

I saw another great question on Crop Talk this morning, how much nitrogen do soybeans need?  Do you apply any nitrogen to soybeans?

"The soybean needs 4-6 lbs nitrogen per bushel depending on your soil which depends where you are at.


The best bang for the buck I ever found was inoculation. The ABM strains have worked best for me. Every good soybean grower I know uses something like that.

The next thing is we don't feed enough nutrients to our soybeans. How does your soil provide the 17 known and needed nutrients would be my question to you.  We in agriculture tend to over feed nitrate and under feed everything else.

Not knowing anything about you or your conditions I would say that MAP has given me good N for soybeans. AMS has also. I want my soil around 50 lbs nitrate when planting soybeans, that's a 100 ppm but I have high yield goals and I am trying to feed everything else with it.

If you are N deficient, a post of 15-3-3 plus micros has done really well for me to get plant height to set nodes. This would be late planting for me which we are looking at, or double crop or old farms that haven't been taken care of.

If you have done your background work and have plant heigtht, then you need less nitrate and more of everything else.  To make one recommendation for you not knowing this background would not be wise of me.

I am looking for balance of nutrient in my soybeans and getting better but not there yet.  Every field is different.

For my non farming friends, some of us are trying to figure out how to raise the most healthy crops to our food system, yet they must be profitable.

Does this make sense to you?

Ed Winkle