Orange City Area Health System

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Orange City Walk-In Clinic: 712.707.6070 Orange City Family Medicine: 712.737.2000 Hospers Medical Clinic: 712.752.8800 Mill Creek Family Practice: 712.448.2000

Safe family medicine clinics in three communities, plus Walk-In Clinic and Emergency Medicine in Orange City. Skilled family doctors, nurses, surgeons, therapists, urgent care and emergency medicine providers, and support staff. Essential health and well-being services, screenings, and medical care for every stage of life ... every day.

“We’ve degraded the amount of carbon in the soil because of the overuse of nitrogen,” Dennis said. “Carbon has to be there for a plant to produce sugar. If we don’t have enough available carbon either in CO2 or actual carbon in the growing root zone, we’re not going to produce the amount of sugar we should. If we have good biological activity, there’s actually beneficial bacteria that will capture nitrogen from the air and make it available for the crop, either through the leaves of the crop or the root system. Especially corn in the fifth node area, the right beneficial bacteria will capture the excess nitrogen in the air. That’s the way nature used to do it.” He continued the lesson: “It isn’t how much nitrogen you put on, it’s how you balance all your nutrients, including your micronutrients, that will determine your yields. The two nutrients we find in the shortest supply in northwest Iowa are sulfur and boron. Those are the ones I’ll see missing when we do a complete soil test, or tissue test, that will be the most responsible for yields falling short. Even something as simple as an ear tip filling or not is more than likely related to boron deficiency rather than overpopulating the corn.” A small amount of boron goes a long way, he said. “Like other micronutrients, you don’t need much of them, but when they're really deficient, you get serious yield pullback. You lose the efficiencies of microbial life in the soil. Microbes in the soil require nutrition because they’re the ones that actually provide the nutrition to the plants. They convert the nutrition to a plant-available form of fertilizer. If you don’t have good biology in the soil, you’re missing an essential step in crop production. Also, by foliar-feeding the crop a balanced ration of carbon and nutrients, the plant exudates (which is sap shared through the roots) greatly increase soil microbe populations.” At his seminars, Dennis also reminds farmers that carbon is the basis for all life. “Yet we don’t manage it, we take it for granted. All the bacteria that’s in the soil gives off CO2, that’s part of their respiration. The CO2 is utilized by the plant, especially the underside of the leaves. If you do a better job of capturing the CO2, you improve the sugar content of the plant.” There are multiple benefits of improving the sugar content. Every plant is a “sugar factory” and it is sugar with all other nutrients which produces the final grain or fruit. In addition, a high sugar level will make the plant toxic to a lot of insect pests, which is one of nature’s ways to fight the insects. “If you can raise the sugar level to a certain point, most insects can’t digest the plant’s sap. High sugar content produces alcohol and, as my college entomology professor would say, ‘Most of your feeding larvae can’t burp or fart, so they come apart.’ That’s a saying you’d never forget. “After World War II, we developed more synthetic insecticides to control the insect population instead of managing nutrition more. We’ve come to the realization that if we’re going to survive the extremes of weather, we need to have a healthier soil and a healthier plant to tolerate those extremes, whether it’s cold or heat.”