A field agronomist says research shows there can be a big difference in yields just by making a few changes on the planter.
Joey Heneghan with Beck’s Hybrids tells Brownfield changing the smooth rubber closing wheels to spiked wheels helps in some soil types and increased yields more than five bushels per acre. “Your soil types in certain areas, you know, not every single spiked wheel is going to be the best and some might work better but I think what we’re mostly seeing is we’re getting better sidewall facturing and less compaction transfering through from that planter pass with basically any tooth or spiked-type wheel.”
But he says the research shows there are exceptions. “With high-residue or cover crops, sometimes, some of the spiked closing wheels are a little bit too aggressive and they can start wrapping up on that residue, wrapping up on the cover crops, so there’s not really a one-size-fits-all solution.”
Heneghan says getting the right planting depth is also critical, and their research experiments proved it. “We shallowed up to a one inch depth instead of a two inch depth and the impact across all of the sites and locations just in the first year of doing that was about $50 per acre, so not insignificant at all. Not two, three or four dollars, fifty dollars.”
Heneghan says the planting pass is still the most critical pass farmers make through their fields every year, and missing some small details can add up to significant losses.
The research is available to farmers in the Beck’s Planter Resource Guide.
