April 28th, 2012-Hitting the Strip

We got started planting corn on Wednesday about noon as field conditions had dried out fairly well from the couple inches of rain we received last weekend.  I took off a few hours from work to go to the field to help Dad get started.  We started on an 80 of corn on corn where we had about 15 acres of strips and the rest of the field had been plowed.  We started all the monitors up and dropped the planter and took off for the first time planting with RTK.  Dad commented that it was the first time in his 38 years of farming that he went to the field and dropped the planter and everything worked!  That's saying something since we have more things going on in the cab than ever before.  Here's a pic of the monitor bank:

Outback S3 Autosteer monitor on upper left, then AMVAC Smartbox monitor middle top, Kinze Planter monitor bottom middle and Ag Leader Insight on the right.  Out of sight on the planter is our Redball manifold for our starter system monitoring. 

We started on the corn on corn strips first and it worked fantastic as we had no problem lining up and staying right on top of the strips with the RTK.  The trash whippers cleaned off the little bit of remaining residue that was left and we planted into probably the cleanest and consistent seed bed of corn on corn we ever have including our black plowing. My Dad has been supportive but pretty concerned how this was going to all work out this spring but it was pretty satisfying to see this expression on his face the first round of planting on strips.  We both were pretty relieved that everything had come together and was working.  We planted the 15 acres of strips and then transitioned into the plowing where the the mellowness of the ground gave Dad some fits with getting the autosteer adjusted to play nice with the ground conditions.  He said the strips were much easier to hold the line on. 

 

This field didn't have much for weeds coming other than a few scattered dandelions so we'll probably come back after it dries up with on herbicide program with a little burndown kick.  This field is going to be conventional corn and we're planning on using a full rate of Corvus and Atrazine with a some Roundup for the few weeds that are up sprayed pre-emerge. 

The most decorative piece on our planting ensemble is my Dad's prized 3 point mounted Walsh tank from 1975 which carries our starter fertilizer.  Spotting a tank of this vintage and character in the corn belt today is something akin to spotting the Sasquatch.  Sometimes folks stop and on take pictures.  Long live the lime green Walsh.

We continued on to plant a few more farms of both plowing and stripped bean stubble and I can say for sure that from a planting standpoint, both Dad and I are sold on how much happier we are with the seed bed we're planting into with the strips.  There are no zones of compaction from field cultivator tracks angling across the field...every row is just as mellow as the next all the way across the field.  Now it's just a matter of getting some heat and popping this stuff up.  We've got another day and a half left of planting corn and putting in our Roundup and conventional corn plots and then on to soybeans.  I'm hoping to do my inter crop planting sometime this next week as well and will likely plant the corn and the beans at the same time.  I'll try to take plenty of pics and maybe some video of doing that.  Here's to a good week!