 One thing I talk to a lot of producers about is what affects your alfalfa yield. As we're talking through things, there are five different items that affect alfalfa yield. Stand age is one of them, plant stem density, water, disease or pests, and soil fertility. Today we're going to talk about soil fertility in an alfalfa stand. So those nutrients that we look for in a regular stand are nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. Sometimes we look also at sulfur and some of our micronutrients like boron. Sulfur isn't something that we need to focus on in North Dakota because we have an abundance of it here. Nitrogen is also one that we don't have to focus on because alfalfa is a legume and that plant produces it itself. If you ever pull up a root system and are able to see small nodules at the base of that plant, those are the nodules that produce nitrogen for the alfalfa. The two that we really want to focus on are potassium and phosphorus. Alfalfa is a large user of potassium and that's one of our main fertilizers for this crop. So you want to make sure that potassium is something that we look for. One thing we want to do right away, take a soil sample in your alfalfa field to see what you're lacking. Every year we mine those nutrients and those nutrients are taken out after the crop is taken off. So one of the things we look for is what's there already and what we need to add back. An annual application of 1152, if that's what you need for your alfalfa stand, is something that can be used. You also want to look at your CEC levels in the soil to make sure that those are at an appropriate level. That will also tell you how much potassium that you want to use. And a surface application is more than acceptable. Phosphorus is another fertilizer that you can add to the crop. You also want to do a soil test to see where your levels are at. Phosphorus is best applied after the first cutting.