LAST YEAR’S HIGH FERTILIZER costs sent Tom Hicks of Montrose, CO to the Internet to find cheaper, yet effective, fertilizers. Hicks manages K-M Ranch, located on a Colorado mountainside above Montrose. The ranch is at 7,500 feet average elevation and is owned by Dealers Kent and Misti Mazzia. Hicks is Misti’s father.

Online research led Hicks to AGGRAND Natural Liquid Fertilizers for the ranch where they grow and sell “alfalfa and grass hay and 12,000 beautiful Colorado Blue Spruce trees,” Hicks said. There are 200 acres of irrigated land, 860 total acres.

Last year’s production for the fi rst cutting of hay was 160 tons, Hicks said. This year’s first cutting found the yield much improved. "With the AGGRAND 4-3-3 and AGGRAND Natural Kelp and Sulfate of Potash 0-0-8, we had an increase in our first cutting of hay production from 160 tons to 232 tons," Hicks said.

Last year, the field was fertilized with 28 percent liquid nitrogen at four gallons per acre at a cost of about $39 an acre.

"This year, using AGGRAND 4-3-3 and 0-0-8, the cost was lowered to about $33 per acre and lowered our cost by $6 an acre over the time-released liquid nitrogen product used last year," Hicks said.

Hicks said the fields have been unfertilized for years before he took over management. "We’ve done quite a bit of experimenting," he said.

Soil analysis revealed a need for more sulfur, but they couldn’t afford to put in the granular sulfur that needs time to work into the soil, Hicks said. "AGGRAND got nutrients into the grasses right away," he said. "Within a few weeks I could see the difference."

He sprayed his mixture of AGGRAND fertilizer at a ratio of five gallons of solution to 100 gallons of water on part of one field and could see where the grass was four inches taller in the section sprayed with AGGRAND.