2010-4-29
2010-4-28
The ground is dry enough to be in the field, but we aren't going to start on soybeans quite yet. The first corn we planted is up and about 1 inch tall. We planted the sweet corn today.
2010-4-25
It has rained about 2 inches over the past few days. It came down slowly, so almost no runoff.
2010-4-21
Finished planting corn.
2010-4-20
It appears we should finish planting corn tomorrow. Today we had one seed meter that self-destructed due to a piece of oak pallet that wasn't supposed to be in there. Ground conditions are still bone dry, but the chance of rain is looking good for this weekend.
| Video Spring Tillage 2 |
Video Planting Corn 4 |
2010-4-19
2010-4-18
Late start, early quit.
2010-4-17
The wind slowed down enough that we could get the sprayer out. Planting continues.
We plant numerous varieties of corn. The planter we use has 24 rows, each of which has a small hopper for seed. A bag of corn typically contains 80,000 seeds, and weighs somewhere between 40-70 lbs, depending on seed size. The hopper for one row will hold 1.5 to 2 bags worth of seed, which is enough to plant for about 3 hours. Every bag has a pull-string on one end that you pull to open it. We have found that it is slightly more efficient to just throw the bag onto the top of the hopper and then slice the bottom side with a knife. It collapses into the hopper, and you pull the bag out.
Sometimes we will put two different hybrids into the planter, such as 8 rows of one kind, 16 rows of another. This is usually done for "refuge" corn that doesn't have the same insect killing traits that the other corn has. The corn that has the genetics to kill insects doesn't have a 100% kill rate, which means that the surviving insects will build up resistance to that trait. The refuge ensures that the insect population won't be 100% resistant to the traits, which would make the trait useless. I'm not a insect life-cycle expert, but that's the short version.
| Video Planting Corn 3 |
2010-4-16
Slightly cooler today, but still windy. Planter is rolling again today, although we really aren't in love with it. Kinze has done a fine job on the steel, with the exception of the transport axle hitting things if it is too high or low when folding/unfolding. The electronics, however, need to be scrapped and replaced with something that works consistently. We lost 45 minutes today troubleshooting why the hydraulic motors wouldn't spin. Ended up rebooting everything, which resolved that. I love how the insight doesn't tell you that it shut off the clutches for a waterway until you are out of it and 10-20 feet into the crop again. Latency is awesome. Note that the clutches do turn on/off at the correct times, but it thinks it needs to throw a pop-up message to tell you that, which is the part that is slow. I also love how the insight goes crazy with alarms for things that aren't severe. It works well when it works, but it sure takes a lot of time to fix when it doesn't.
| Video Planting Corn 2 |
2010-4-15
Today was another beautiful day.
2010-4-14
We did a test run of about 50 acres today. A couple small quirks, but we'll work on those before we get rolling tomorrow. Soil temperature is between 58 and 65 degrees F. Planting conditions are the best we've seen in the last 3 years. We aren't the first guys putting seed in the ground, but not many people are running yet. We're running on RTK from the IA DOT's RTN, and that is working good so far. The transport mechanism on the Kinze 3800 is unforgiving and requires you follow the fold/unfold procedure exactly. We nearly peeled one of the transport tires off the rim today due to having that axle at the wrong height while folding up. Also, the Insight has a bug where it won't tell you what correction service you're on while on the main run screen.
| Video Planting Corn 1 |
2010-4-13
Finished spraying Treflan yesterday, and finished incorporating it today. There were a couple planters rolling in our area today. We aren't yet comfortable with the frost risk, so we're going to wait. We haven't seen a serious killing frost in May for a couple years, and it seems like the planting date keeps creeping up due to the good luck of years past. One of these years, that won't work out. It was about 80 degrees today and full sun. Ground conditions are nearly perfect. We'll do a test run with the planter tomorrow, just to confirm all the modules work after the software updates.
2010-4-10
We started field work today. Spray the Treflan, then work it in to the soil. Only did ~40 acres due to the threat of some afternoon showers, but it was a good test to see if anything broke while sitting in the shed. There are still some wet spots, and more rain is in the forecast.
| Video Spring Tillage - Incorporating Treflan |