Success depends upon proper preparation. Spring is coming

Joe

Paulson: Hi everybody, this is the Ag View Pitch. I'm Joe Paulsen and I'm here today with Brent Judisch from PK Midwest to talk spring prep. And how's it going today, Brent?

Brent

Judisch: Well, we actually had our first rain in forever, so I'm in a good mood today.

Joe

Paulson: So Well, that's good. I was out running boundaries this morning and you could have, you could have worked dirt this morning around here, here in northern Illinois.

Brent

Judisch: So it was— yeah, they start pulling hydras here in the last week and of course they quit today because of the rain. But it's a lot of guys getting going 30 days ahead of normal.

Joe

Paulson: Just crazy. Just crazy. So that leads us right into this conversation. You know, what are some hot button things that, that you think us operators should be thinking about as we get our equipment ready?

Brent

Judisch: Well, we'll start with sprayers. I mean, you know, sprayers are a very important piece of the puzzle anymore. Probably the fastest payback machine that we own as farmers. Couple of things on sprayers that guys need to pay attention to is wheel motor oil. It's synthetic. I think a lot of guys don't pay attention to that as much. But, you know, you run it out and down through the field, 14 miles an hour all day long, carrying a lot of weight. They get a lot of heat buildup. I recommend every year pulling oil out of there. When you do, it's gonna just— don't do it at the shop, do it outside. It's gonna stink. That stuff really has a smell to it. But I think that's something that people probably negate, don't do as much as they have to. Every 300 to 400 hours you should be doing that. If you don't, you're going to get some leaks over time.

And that gets that pressure out, you know, them hubs that build up pressure when you're driving. So when you drain that oil out, you're not only getting the oil out and putting new one, you're also relieving that pressure.. And that's a very important long-term. Also, I think we probably get a little bit of a habit. We run our tips too long. I think, you know, oh, I had my tips in 3 or 4 years. They still work fine. I'd venture to say 2 or 3 years is about it on a good set of tips. You know, I think that's something the guys, well, yeah, they're kind of expensive, especially with now we have ExactApply spray now where everything also shuts itself off. But I think that's something guys also need to pay attention to. Check them out, see what they look like.

I guarantee if you sprayed 3 or 4 years, you're probably getting and not getting the same pattern that you want out of that sprayer tip.

Joe

Paulson: 100% agree with that. I know with my sprayer, you know, you can just kind of tell looking at it through the sunshine when the droplets don't quite look like they used to and that kind of thing. It's always a good idea to, you know, the tips are cheap, especially when you think about how much you're push it out of them, you know.

Brent

Judisch: Well, it's like, and technology is better. I, I, every 2 or 3 years they change the tips, they change how they work, they change the droplet size. So if you have your set that are getting kind of at the end of their life, replace them. I guarantee the new ones can be better to begin with. You know, forget the fact they're new, but they're going to be a little bit better technology, a little bit more durable. They're probably going to do a better job just because of how they're designed.

Joe

Paulson: Is there anything else there with those sprayers that, that you can think of is, uh, good to look at?

Brent

Judisch: Well, on the older, if you have an older sprayer, more than 7, 8 years old, just keep an eye on your airbag pressure. That's very important to keep the machine level, goes to the field level. Your newer machines, it's not as critical. It's all automatic now. Every airbag has a sensor on it. So the newer machines have AutoAir. It levels itself, keeps the pressure going. Other thing is look at your tires. I mean, we seem to be getting a lot of sprayers out there with 2,000 and 3,000 hours on them now. And you know, the last thing you want to do is going on the road and have one of them tires blow. I think we probably get sensitive to run them, the sprayer tires a little bit too long. I see a lot of them coming here 20, 30, 40% and the sidewalls are starting to crack. So pay attention to that. You're putting a lot of weight on the back end of that sprayer.

You got 120-foot boom hanging back there. You throw 1,000 gallons of product on there. There's a lot of weight on that. I think we probably need to be paying attention to them tires a little more, especially on the rear of the machine.

Joe

Paulson: It's an excellent point about the tires. I have a John Deere 4720 and a good old, good old machine, and I took it in, had it gone through their, their special. And, you know, one of the things they did is, you know, re-shimming the scissor links in the suspension and checking that out for alignment. It helps with that tire wear, you know, especially if you're doing a lot of road. You know, is there any GPS, you know, stuff that we need to be looking at, you know, software, that kind of thing?

Brent

Judisch: Well, John Deere issues new software every March and August. That's kind of standard equipment. I recommend going in. You can do it yourself. Throw your thumb drive in your computer, go on to myjohndeere.com and get your updates. The updates are not— they're not made to be a pain in the backside. They're actually made for accuracy, reads the satellites better. There's usually a little bit update. But so anytime you get into March, now we're at March, it's a great time to go in. It's also a great time to go in and reexamine your— on your MyJohn Deere, your farms and fields. As a perimeter change, maybe I cut a waterway out, or maybe we took out some trees. You have the ability to go in there on the computer and change your maps if you need to. We've been doing ours last couple of weeks.

So it's a great time because when I go to the field, how many guys call me and say, oh, I forgot to do this, forgot to do that. You know, once you get the MyJohn to your current and get your thumb drives loaded, go put it in every machine you have. It only takes a couple of minutes, but it's going to save you a lot of grief when you get to the field.

Joe

Paulson: Well, it's nice to get that stuff done ahead of time before the dirt starts flying. Anything else before we move on to planters?

Brent

Judisch: Nope. Like I said, sprayers, we need to pay more attention. I said it's the fastest payback machine we own, so give it a little love and it'll take care of us for a long time. Right.

Joe

Paulson: So let's move on to planters. I have a, I have my very first high-speed planter for this spring. It's an ExactEmerge. So I'm all ears here on things that I need to look out for.

Brent

Judisch: Well, you know, we talked a little bit about sprayers. Technology is just really taking over the planter market. 2015 was the first year that ExactEmerge came out. So we're looking at— this is our 10th season now. And just the little subtle changes along the way, you know, we've added hydraulic wing pressure to take the weight off the center frame. We've added hydraulic downforce for the row units. You have the option now to— everybody's running some sort of a different closing wheel, a spike or a cast or whatever. We're all trying to find ways to get that better seed-soil contact, to get that corn and soybeans to merge evenly. And we're finding out that the better we can do a job of that, the more important it's going to be at yield at the end of the year. So I guess I tell people, if you don't plant it right, the rest of the year is not going to be great.

Joe

Paulson: It all starts with the planter, man. That's for sure.

Brent

Judisch: And actually, it starts before that actually starts with your tillage pass. I mean, whether you're VTN, no-till, strip-till, there's a lot of different ways to get it done now. But having a nice firm but level seedbed is important. Having a trash whipper or something on the planter to get the trash put out of the way is very important. Just yeah, whatever you can do to make the— take the pressure off of that planter opener. Is going to really help in the long run. Right.

Joe

Paulson: Is, you know, calibrations, you know, you know, the closing system, like going back to the closing system, I'm kind of new to the John Deere closing system. Is there an alignment to that? Is that there, you know, on getting those closing wheels and making sure that that's lined up with the furrow?

Brent

Judisch: Yeah, so what we do is take our, take our planter out in our, actually in our driveway in the spring, and we just put it on the ground. We take all the pressure off closing wheels and we drive the planter ahead 20 feet, and then we go back and look at them. And just from one year to the next, they can come loose, the nuts can come, you know, they can be out of adjustment. There's an oscillation on each side of the closing wheel, and you want to make sure that they're true center over the trench, no matter what you have for a wheel back there. You want to make sure they're together. And also, most of the planters now have staggered closing wheels. There's 2 holes on each side. I recommend that if you're going to do a lot of corn on corn or planting corn behind beans. That just lowers the chance of getting root balls build up.

If they're staggered a little bit, they're not parallel to each other. And that if you have some trash or debris get in there, the chance of them building up and plugging up is a lot lower. Right on.

Joe

Paulson: Good advice. Um, so then, uh, moving on to tractors, uh, is there anything on tractors that, that, that we need to look at other than just changing oil and, uh, you know, greasing it?

Brent

Judisch: Well, on the tractors, it's really important that we're— everything's hydraulic now. Hydraulic downforce, we got generators powering the planter now. I need to make sure that on our hydraulic— hydraulic oils get filters get changed every year, especially with the amount of oil. You know, we're flowing 6, 8 gallons of oil through 3 or 4 different SCVs, so we're moving a lot of oil through that tractor to run that planter. Make sure we keep our oil levels proper and make sure we get our filters changed. We don't want any back pressure or any adverse heat building up in that tractor as we're running at these high speeds, because even on a 10 mph tractor and planter, there's a lot of heat builds up in that transmission. Not only are you running the planter, but you're also running that tractor through the field at a higher speed.

So keeping them filters clean and keeping that pressure out of that system is really important. Right on.

Joe

Paulson: Um, what, what, what else is there that we haven't covered that, that you think is pertinent information that are things that are things that are commonly overlooked that causes a lot of problems in the spring?

Brent

Judisch: Well, I think it starts at the tractor. Most planters today, unless you go with the DBs, are run off the 2-point hitch of the tractor. Your DB planters or some of the other brands, the Kienzie, pull off the drawbar, but in the Deere case, we pull off the hitch. The best way to set that hitch up is to park it in your yard, fold the planter out, get that planter tongue level, and then raise it just a little bit. You want that planter hitch to be a little higher at the front than the back, and the reason is, is your parallel arms are parallel with the ground, and if you have that hitch short, it's going to shorten them parallel arms up, and that could affect your depth control. So if I raise my planter hitch, I always kind of set my level and raise it about 3 inches at the front. That way my parallel arms are a little longer.

They're not shorter, they're a little longer, And so if I go through a dip in the field, or maybe I'll go over a terrace or something, or go through a waterway, it's going to have enough room to let them parallel arms flex and come back to level. Or if I have that hitch level or just a little bit short in the front, it's going to be the opposite effect. It's going to shorten them arms up, and I won't keep true contact with my gauge wheel and my close grips.

Joe

Paulson: Fantastic. Also good advice. You know, some of the things that I brought up here that I've kind of learned over the years is, you know, like having a— like putting— having your planting plan together, having it written down on a laminated sheet in the cab and then hand it out to your tender guys. So that way if something happens to you or whatever, people, you know, the plan can be handed off. You know, the other things are is just making sure that Ops Center is up to date, you know, or, you know, just having everything together so that you're— when the dirt hits, you know, we're making sure that we have everything ready to go when we get ready to hit the field.

Brent

Judisch: But I think also, you know, our newer seed tenders now have talc or talc-graphite mix on them. I think we have a tendency to maybe not use enough lubricant, you know. Yeah, seed's coated, but the same token, when you got a— you turn on that planter 10 mile an hour, you're really spinning the meters quick. And by getting the proper amount of talc and graphite mix in there, depends on how you do it. I think that's something that we overlook. I don't know if we get enough talc in there. You don't want to get too much, it'll cloud your eyes. But, you know, you got to keep everything lubricated. Just as your engine needs to be lubricated, so does your seed. So I think that's very important. Also, I think I keep in my tractor, both my tractors are Planters, a Pioneer seed depth gauge. And it's a little tool that's got the inches on it.

Do that every day, every field, because bean stubble is going to be different than corn on corn, or maybe I've got a lighter, sandier soil. Well, if I got a lighter soil, my gauge wheels are going to penetrate a little deeper. I could end up with my seed a little deep. So I recommend keeping them with you and go back and just take a closing wheel, spring it loose, drive 20 feet and go back and check it. It's not hard to do, but it could be really critical. If we can— if we get it too hot in a dry summer, you plant it too shallow, that's not good. You plant it too deep and it gets wet and mucky, that's not good. So I want to make sure we kind of get that seed depth as where we want it and be careful we get it to that point.

Joe

Paulson: Fantastic advice. We, you know, I have hanging right on the back of my planter, I have one of those depth gauges and, you know, there's, you got to dig, you got to get out and dig and verify. One other thing we haven't covered here is making sure that the section control and the lead and the lag as you're coming in, you know, getting a double check in that you're not leaving a huge gap. We've all seen that where, you know, somebody had something not set right and all of a sudden you got a big 20-foot gap coming in and then you're overlapping 20-foot going out.

Brent

Judisch: So that's probably the number one call I get every year. And most of the time when I have them go in and go into their swath pro page, what are your dimensions? Well, zero. What's your leg time? Zero. I've just— I keep them on my phone. Thank goodness for smartphones. I got my first section control 10 years ago. I have my parameters put in there for my planters. Any customer that I deal with, I give them all to them. Most guys don't think about that until it's too late. You know, how many, how many times you drive down the road and the guy's got a 4-foot gap here and a 5-foot gap there. Those— if you have my planters the same from year to year, it doesn't change from year to year. But most of the time people just forget to get them. Now on the new monitors, the Deere has a Gen 4, the Gen 5s, it's automatic now.

I can go in there and say I'm planting 1 foot too soon or I'm planting 1 foot too late. It will automatically change your parameters. But you have to tell it where I'm off. So that's one thing that Deere's changed in the last, I think, 3 years. So if you're off today, you're not trying because it's automatic. If you get close and then refine it, it'll make it exact.

Joe

Paulson: I didn't catch it. I had one year where I would back into a corn, take it a while before it realized that it wasn't going backwards. So it would start to plant and then when the tractor flipped around, then it would leave a gap and then, you'd take off and, you you know, having to look at that all summer long.

Brent

Judisch: Yeah, I do like the fact most of your planters now have a quick start feature. Yeah, if it's doing that for you, you can just push the button, it'll actually rotate the meters one time for you. That way you eliminate that 3 or 4 foot lag time, should fill that in. And the other thing is, you know, like we think about this kind of laugh, but you know, you take your monitor out of your combine, it's going backwards, steering wheels are behind you. You push a monitor in the tractor. If you happen to use the same monitor, you don't have to turn it around. You know, it's now string wheels in the front. So there are some simple things that we kind of overlook from one season to the next, and that can make a big difference in how stuff reacts and how it works.

Joe

Paulson: This fall, when I was started to run boundaries with the Gators, the first time I'd ever done that, and that, uh, I didn't realize that you could orientate those receivers front or backwards. I had to did my first two fields and didn't catch that the gator was going backwards through the field and had to turn that orientation around.

Brent

Judisch: So the good news is for 2024, John Deere fixed that. We now actually mount the receiver on the gator in the right direction, not backwards.

Joe

Paulson: So gotcha. Thank goodness. Exactly. That eliminates some, some problems. Well, Brent, is there anything else you want to add? I know that you got to get going here pretty soon, but you know, what else you got to add?

Brent

Judisch: Like I said earlier, tractor tire pressure. I mentioned tractors. Tire pressure, really important to keep that planter level, keep that hitch level. Most tractors today are 12 to 14 PSI, even on the fronts if you have front duals. Most of the time I go check you guys' tractor, they're at 20, 22. I mean, them tires need to be inflated so that they, that they float properly in the field, but they also have some give to them. Or you can— you run a track tractor, same thing. The less stress I can put on the planter, the better that planter is going to perform, whether it be my tillage pass, my tractor, the conditions. Uh, watch the conditions we're in. I said if you're in a real cloudy field, you may have to run your, your, um, trash whippers a little deeper than you want normally. I'm in a bean stubble field with hardly any trash. I may not need the trash whippers.

I mean, I think we tend to get out and plant every field the same. Not every field's the same. Almost every field, even in the field, there's changes, then that's hard to make. But when I'm doing— I set up one of my planters for corn on corn, the other one for corn on beans. And then when I'm setting, I'll plant a little bit deeper with the corn on corn. I keep the planter separate. So I know that my settings are going to work pretty good as we run on a 2 or 3 or 4 day window that, yeah, she's going to do corn on corn, I'm going to do corn on beans, and our planter is going to work well. But I'm switching back and forth, I'm going to have to change that depth, change that down pressure, change my closing wheel pressure. Don't just think that one setting works for every field because it just doesn't.

Joe

Paulson: I've gotten to the point where I got a Sharpie in the cab and I end up with a checklist that I write on the window, you know, when I pull into a field before I take off, hey, I want to make sure that I'm, you know, we're covering all these different bases. You know, I started doing that when I was strip-tilling, seemed like there was a lot of, lot of things to make sure you had in the right spots. And, you know, writing that down and then, you know, going through just like a pilot, you know, going through the checklist. You know, make sure the basics are right.

Brent

Judisch: You know, well, the bad thing about spring is it's a short window, you know, it takes us 8 or 9 days to plant our corn. By the 6th or 7th day, we know what we're doing. But then first 3 or 4 or 5 days, oh, I forgot this, or shoot, I didn't do that, you know. And so harvest is different because we're at it 6 or 7 weeks. But planning, by the time you get it figured out, usually done already, go on to the next project.

Joe

Paulson: Correct. Usually spent the first 3 days with your hair on fire. And then you kind of hit, kind of hit, kind of hit that, that, that groove.

Brent

Judisch: You know, just about the time you're done, you know, yeah, that's, and that's where at least my advantage working at the dealership and farming is, I get to go out and do it, get the stuff set up ahead of time. So when I'm planting my own corn, I probably help 20 guys get their planter started. So at least I got all the cobwebs out of my brain anyway.

Joe

Paulson: That's a good side effect to that job for sure.

Brent

Judisch: It helps a lot sometimes.

Joe

Paulson: Yeah, I can imagine.

Brent

Judisch: But yeah, I know that's the last thing I would say is I recommend that what we do is we'll go out and plant an acre a week before planting, you know, go out and put an Endro and make one pass. There's nothing ever— you put it away in the shed, it worked perfect. You get it out in the spring and nothing works. You know, don't try and go out there and plant 400 acres on day one and I haven't tried the planter yet. You know, just go put an Endro in, go plant a couple hundred yards, make sure that your depth is what you want, your down pressure. Maybe I got a chain jumping or skipping, or maybe I got an electric motor that's binding up and not turning right. You know, do that ahead of time. Don't wait till you go to the field the first time to figure out, oh crud, now it's not working.

Joe

Paulson: I like to go knock a 40 in, you know, almost like a sacrificial lamb just to get all, just to get all the bugs worked out. And last year It was about the 14th of April, which is really early for us. And, but it was fit and I went and put a 40 in and it took me 2 days to put that 40 in. Yep. So you never know.

Brent

Judisch: Yeah, the first 40 acres takes a half a day. The next 500 only takes a day and a half. So that's kind of how harvest is, kind of the same way. So it's spraying the same way. I'll go out and get the sprayer out and get— just put water in it for the first 100 gallons. Go out and drive around this— this is nice out now. Go out and drive around the field. Make sure it's all working. Make sure your swath pro is working. That's another thing. Swath pro, just because your fields are all mapped doesn't mean that your swath pro is exact. What we do is we'll turn our swath pro off the first pass around the field. Maybe I'm off 3, 4 feet, you know. If I turn it off the first path, I know I'll get the perimeter planted. Then once I get that first pass in, then I'll go ahead and check the box and go plant normal.

But sometimes, you know, things happen or a tree fell over and I got to go around or outside of it. And then, oh, I didn't plant the first 2 rows. That's kind of a simple way to avoid that. So.

Joe

Paulson: Thanks, Brent. Good advice. Well, thanks for all your time today. I really appreciate it. And I'm sure we'll be talking to you again soon.

Brent

Judisch: Well, thanks for doing this. I mean, it's important to these farmers to know what's going on and to kind of keep educated. And like I said, planting is the most important task of the year. So let's make it right.

Joe

Paulson: Right on. Well, thanks for everything, Brent. And we'll sign off now. And thanks, everybody, for listening.