Potato response to additional nitrogen + grab-bag from the news

Potatoes and fertilizer

Michael, the sometimes anonymous, asked some questions about potatoes and nitrogen rates 

Most crops will show linear, positive responses when a "bottleneck" nutrient is supplemented in moderate amounts. As the supplementation is increased, there comes point when other variables bottle-necking production more than the nutrient of interest. While the crop might still show a positive response, the increment of gain decreases as incremental amounts of the (formerly bottle-necking) nutrient increase.

Traditionally, growers would stop increasing the amount of added nutrient at the point where the income of the incremental production equaled the cost of the incremental nutrient input.

More recently, external costs like nutrient leaching into surface and ground-water have been considered and nutrient use efficiency (how much ends up in the plant) has been added into the equation. From a macro-scale, if you are approaching saturation and your neighbor is far short of it, society is best served if your neighbor applies the nutrient because he will get a higher incremental return on the investment. That is, more food will be produced in-aggregate, if all producers stop adding the nutrient when it hits the same incremental gain/incremental amount applied.

"Sensitivity" is a useful concept for the small grower. That is the incremental production that can be expected per unit-of-added nutrient. The underlying assumptions are important to understand. There is no point in adding more nitrogen, for instance, if your primary bottleneck is lack of moisture in the soil or lack of sunlight.

In Michigan, potatoes/urea can be expected to have a sensitivity of 150:1. That is, if nitrogen is the bottleneck nutrient then each unit of urea added to the potato-patch can be expected to produce an incremental 150 units of potatoes. As long as the total amount of nitrogen available to the potato plants doesn't approach the levels where it exceeds what the plant can absorb and use, that  number is insensitive to the area the urea is spread over and fairly insensitive to whether you planted the potato plants 6" apart in the rows or 18" apart in the rows. I expect this information to be applicable to regions in the United States north of Interstate 70.

"Saturation" depicted by the yellow region where incremental response is functionally almost zero

Actual numbers. Picture a row of potatoes that is 33 feet long (roughly 10 meters) with the rows 40" apart (about one meter). If the soil was totally devoid of nitrogen then one pound of urea, if applied at appropriate times, will be nibbling at the lower end of the saturation level...in Michigan using vigorous, mid or late-season varieties.

That same row of potatoes planted in good garden soil might only get half as much nitrogen as they can use. In that case, adding up to half-a-pound of urea per 33 feet of row will still provide the magical, linear, incremental-response of 150 pounds of potatoes for every pound of urea added.

If you live where metric is king, one kg of urea for every 20 meters of row for horrible dirt and 1/2 kg of urea for every 20 meters will still give you the 150:1 response.

This table shows the yield that commercial potato growers in Michigan can expect from various application rates for nitrogen. 10,000 additional pounds of potatoes for each additional 30 pounds of N. This table and the next table are from MSU E-2779.

If you think in terms of square-feet, 1000 square-feet of potato patch on decent garden soil can probably absorb 5 pounds of urea (an incremental rate of 100 additional pounds of N per acre) with a net increase in yield of about 750 pounds of potatoes/1000 square-feet.

Caveat: Some of the potatoes will be small, some will be lumpy, some might have deep eyes, some are likely to have "hollow heart". The incremental 750 pounds of potatoes will be edible but they will not all be pretty. You still need to control insects and weeds and provide water when necessary.

Applying N several times through the season reduces losses due to leaching (sand). Remember, you have to add it BEFORE the plant needs it. It takes time to percolate to the root-zone and be absorbed by the plant.

To answer the question Michael asked, I think the unfertilized soil was only supplying 1/3 of the N the plants could use. If I had fertilized at optimum rate (another 7 lb urea per 1000 square-feet for that patch of garden) I would be harvesting 3X the pounds of potatoes with no additional tilling, seed potato planted, weeding or number of shovel-fulls of dirt to dig them. That is a very attractive pay-back rate.

Grab bag

A sample of various countries showing the percentage of their Consumer Price Index that is Energy (X axis) and Food (Y axis)

 

NYT downplayed their actions calling it "an honest mistake". They did not publish a retraction until after Spears filed a lawsuit. Sounds like they DNGAS about accuracy until it looked like it might cost them money.

The reporter had integrity. He left the "News" organization when it refused to present both sides of a volatile issue. Seattle.

I might not be a lawyer, but that looks like "inciting violence" to me. Antifa claims to be totally decentralized but that does not pass the smell test.

Pictures

We got our money's worth out of Quicksilver today. A busy girl is a happy girl.

She participated in picking up potatoes. Yes, I have weeds. I am not proud of it but it is reality.

It was not slave-labor. She was paid with potatoes and a zinnia. She got to take a bucket of them home.

She also spread cut sweet peppers in a single layer on a pizza pan for freezing. After an hour in the freezer they are moved to zip-lock bags. Quicksilver spread the peppers three times. She was paid with two bags of frozen peppers.

She was also given an edible bracelet of the reddest red.

This double-pepper was modeled as a mustache but Quicksilver decided that Groucho Marx mustaches were not her vibe.

Eggplant that was excess to current needs were roasted in the toaster oven outside and then canned in garlic/Italian herb vinegar and oil. Waste not, want not.

 

Boasting

Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you...

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit”—you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears. Instead you should say, “If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.” But now you are boasting in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.   -James 4:10,13-16

 

One of the most toxic elements of social media is that it promotes boasting.

 

Social media is heavily tilted toward self-promotional chest-beating that shills the the awesomeness of the writer. The writer becomes invested in protecting that image as soon he or she utters, writes or records-on-video those thoughts. The toxin becomes increasingly virulent with each step in technology.

 

"I can make a man do anything" results in the person who says it cutting every man out of their life with the gumption or good-sense to push back. Much of the boasting on the internet seems to be some form of that phrase. Not, "I am going to plant a garden" or "I am going to learn to rebuild Perkins diesel engines" or "I signed up to visit less mobile senior citizens". Nope. It is mostly "I don't have to work because I am going to manipulate people to get what I want."

 

"They are dead to me" means that they delete their numbers from their phone and send their messages to spam. They cannot know of it is a job offer, announcing the death of a friend or perhaps reaching out to see if reconciliation is possible. 

The Bible says "...you cannot make a single hair white or black" -Matt 5:36 A little bit of humility goes a long way.

A joke on boasting

Four boys were bragging about their fathers.

Andy's dad worked in the factory and he started out "My dad is so fast that he can shoot an arrow, drop the bow and catch the arrow before it hits the target." He smiled smugly, sure that none of the other boys could top that story.

Billy's dad was an electrician. "That is nothing. My dad can shoot a 30-06 (rifle) and catch the bullet with his teeth."

Not to be outdone, Chad said "That is nothing. My dad works for the government and he is so fast that he gets out of work for the weekend at 6:00 PM on Friday and we are always driving up the the lake by 11:00 AM on Thursday."

They all looked at Davy with pity. His mom was on welfare. Davy said "My daddy is so fast that I been living here 12 years and have three baby sisters and ain't nobody ever seen him, not even me!" 

So...remember when folks around you start boasting, there are a lot more Chads and Davies than Andy and Billies. Keep your mouth shut. Nod. Make a mental note of their...flexible...memory and creativity around the truth. The Davy with the lowest self-esteem tells the biggest whoppers and gets the angriest when challenged.

Work-ticket report and thoughts on weeding

Work-ticket report

The contractors left at 4:00 PM today. I will tweak a few things they did, with Mrs ERJ's permission, of course.

From a budget standpoint we can pull off one project like this a year. Many of the basic mechanical and electrical systems in our house are 50 years old. Our plan is to have have it ship-shape and apple-pie order when we get old so it can go on auto-pilot.

I dug about 30 feet of potatoes today and it took about 25 minutes. I left the spuds on top of the soil. Call it one foot of row a minute. With 600 feet of row, that works out to ten hours or roughly three-and-a-half days at three hours, time-on-task per day. Running and lifting will have to wait. I have real work to do.

A couple of comments asked how I handle weeds. In a word, "Poorly". Or, if I am generous, "mediocre". My biggest weakness is lack of time-on-task. Weeding is one of my least favorite chores and keeps sliding to "tomorrow".

If/when we start playing for keepsies, it will be a non-negotiable two-hours in the garden/orchards EVERY DAY unless lightning is flying. Every day. All of that time will not be weeding, but any gardener worth his/her salt will pull weeds while they are harvesting or doing other chores. They will pull weeds when they are thinning seedlings. The Hispanics keep a basket to put the edible greens in as they weed. Those go into soup, gravy, side-dishes and so-on. They can also be fed to chickens/ducks and to rabbits in small amounts.

Soil moisture content makes a big difference. Weeds pull easily two days after a rain. My sandy-loam tills well after three days. Five days after a rain, it starts to become a fight to pull weeds. The fact that I let them get big enough to pull is an admission of failure. Young weeds do not have woody roots and are easily handled with a hoe...when the soil moisture is in the Goldilocks zone.

From a purely economic standpoint, garden yields are relatively resilient to some weed pressure after the plants have filled their space and/or they canopy over. However, yields are very sensitive to weed pressure before the plants fill their allotted space.

One of the problems with letting weeds "go" later in the season is that they set seeds, they restrict air-flow through your garden and they harbor pests. They also fight you if you want to plant a cover-crop like Red Clover.

For some crops, like potatoes, mechanical controls like mowing and tilling are viable options. For other crops that ripen later, mechanical control is more difficult and a hybrid method like using a string-trimmer (Weed-Whacker) to mow the tall tops that produce most of the seeds is worth considering.

No good answers. Just muddling along. 

David Morens, advisor to Anthony Fauci pleads guilt

Mostly crickets from the mainstream media. Link

 

I wonder if turning State's Evidence and testifying against former coworkers is part of the plea-deal.

Growing Degree Days, base 50F, Charlotte, Michigan

 

Growing Degree Days b50 by year, Charlotte, Michigan as-of August 19

Median value of 2150 GDDb50.

2026 is one of the warmer years but not a +3 Sigma event but a +1.2 Sigma event.

It is silly to even talk about standard deviations with this swath of data because people automatically jump to percentiles in their head.

Data plotted lowest-to-highest temperatures. 2026 value highlighted with yellow background.

This is not what data from "Normal" or "Bell-shaped" curves looks like.

That kind of data generally has nearly vertical ends and a large horizontal middle region. I am just not seeing it.

The strongest statement I can make is that this year has been warmer-than-typical for my region but it is will within what a fruit or vegetable grower should anticipate. 

Still here

The contractors packed up for the day at 4:00 PM.

They were a mile ahead of me as I drove to Hammond Farms Landscaping Supplies to pick up fill-sand to contour the outdoor area they had been fiddling with. They very graciously agreed to pause their work in that area so I could do that.

While driving to Dimondale, I noticed that the goldenrod is starting to bloom. According to Michigan Flora, there are 23 species of goldenrod that are native to Michigan: Tall, White, Bluestem, Canadian, Zigzag, Late, Hairy, Houghton's, Early, Missouri, Gray, Ohio, Rough-leaved, Upland White, Riddell's, Stiff,  Rough-leaved, Seaside, Gillman's, Showy, Bog, Elm-leaved and Voss's. They are all the same to me. They are all pretty and the bees love them. They are a marker of the passing seasons.

The extent of my gardening yesterday was to pick an eggplant fruit and to dig three hills of potatoes. As reported earlier, I did not add any fertilizer to the potato patch this year, I relied on the nutrients released by the heavy over-layer of vegetation that I tilled into the soil in the spring. The vines did not aggressively canopy over the tilled areas. The tops also stopped growing sooner and died back sooner. The upshot is that I can start harvesting them now because they are not going to be adding any more mass.

The contractors come back today AND I get to watch Quicksilver. The upside is that Mrs ERJ doesn't have any commitments so I will be able to run some errands.

Bonus political meme