Growers who fertigate often over-irrigate fields, while growers converting to Multicote CRF tend to under irrigate. Moisture management is important to ensure optimal release of nutrients and maximum growth potential of the crop.
When fertigating crops with high nutrient demand, such as potato, tomato, peppers, cabbage, etc growers tend to over irrigate in order to get all the nutrients in without pushing the EC of the final solution too high.
As soon as we change the grower to using Multicote Agri where the base fertilizer is placed at planting and fertigation is used only to top up any deficiencies I find that the growers tend to begin under irrigating. The reasons for this are most likely due to cost of pumping water and the availability of water.
The lack of soil moisture leads to poor nutrient release and also poor growth. In potato we see tuber deformation resulting from too little moisture and often a higher incidence of scab.
Proper moisture management is as essential as applying the correct nutrient levels. There are excellent tools to monitor soil moisture and also soil temperature at the same time, giving much needed data from which to make informed decisions at each growth stage.
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