As the 2011 harvest winds down, producers may be looking for ways to get the jump on next year’s fertility program.  As farm sizes have gone up and as producer’s schedules have become tighter and tighter, they may be looking for ways to spread the workload by getting part of their fertility done in the fall for the 2012 crop.

Wolf Trax DDP Micronutrients can be applied in the fall. Today’s bulletin outlines three opportunities for fall use that will help your growers make the most of their micronutrient application this fall.  

Opportunity #1: Apply PROTINUS to wheat seed this fall

It is undisputed that a plant that has to withstand the stress of overwintering is more capable of doing so when it enters winter in good health. For winter wheat, PROTINUS Seed Nutrition is the perfect tool for accomplishing this. PROTINUS-treated wheat emerges faster, grows more extensive roots and enters winter much healthier than seedlings grown without the use of PROTINUS. In Wolf Trax trials, PROTINUS applications resulted in wheat seedlings that were more fully developed both in terms of shoot fresh weight and root fresh weight.

Opportunity #2: In fruit tree/nut crops – Use a foliar application of Wolf Trax DDP Micronutrients

Foliar application of micronutrients can be effective in fruit and nut production. This is because in fall, as leaves turn color, the tree tends to make one last effort to send sugars from the aboveground tissue and senescing leaves down into the trunk and roots where nutrients can be stored for next year. Applied properly, nutrients can be foliarly applied to take advantage of this.

Reporting in the journal ‘California Agriculture’, Christensen, Beede and Peacock compared fall versus spring applications of zinc and boron and found that fall applications were marginally better. They applied in the fall just as leaves were turning and applied in the spring just as buds broke on almonds. The researchers caution that boron rates should be calibrated such that they result in plant tissue being at about 25 ppm boron.

Opportunity #3: In field crops – Use Wolf Trax DDP Micronutrients to coat fall applications of dry fertilizer blends

Wolf Trax DDP Micronutrients may be used as coatings on N, P, K or S and on blends of any combination of these. The advantage of using the Wolf Trax DDP Micronutrients as a coating on dry fertilizer this fall is coated fertilizer provides more uniform application across the field, as well as delivers more “feeding sites” for next year’s corn crop to find micronutrients earlier in the season.



In trials to determine the fate of fall applied Zinc DDP and Boron DDP during a normal winter in the central Great Plains, researchers found that generally, 98 percent of the available zinc stays within 3 inches of where the fertilizer is placed. With Boron DDP, approximately two-thirds of the available boron stays within 3 inches of where the fertilizer was placed, and one third stays in the 3 to 6 inch soil depth – nicely placed for next spring’s crop.

Help your customers make the most of their micronutrient application this fall

You and Wolf Trax….Growing Forward® together.