So planting at the NCRS is in high gear now. It's still pretty cool in the air and soil, but warmer weather is coming. Yesterday Brian and Jacob planted potatoes for the fertilizer tests on that important crop.
One of the new farms had some trees cleared and it was finally dry enough to have them hauled away. No more planting through the woods.
Here is Phil applying herbicide after a corn experiment was planted. Having gps guidance makes this so much easier, and more accurate, than the days of foam markers. The boom covers 45 feet or three plots per pass, which is plenty for our tests.
Over on Farm 12, Stephanie and Tim had a visitor. Troy dropped by to check progress. He gets antsy if planters aren't planting when the weather is nice. And he found his "antsy" alert was a false alarm.
I will give an unsolicited plug to one of our equipment suppliers. We use Ag Xcel's GX2 Tower Pump System on our Monosem planter. It is the most accurate and trouble-free pump system that we have ever seen. Each row applies exactly the same amount of fertilizer over a range of rates used in our tests. In our work, accuracy is the key, and this does a great job. It is a little spendy, but is well worth it, especially considering the cost of inconsistent output and downtime.
