During a recent Farm Journal Corn College session, Field Agronomist Ken Ferrie tackled some of the tough questions growers have about closing systems and stand evaluation. From why social media trends shouldn’t dictate your equipment budget to the “ground-truthing” techniques that reveal hidden planting errors, Ferrie breaks down how to ensure your planter setup delivers a true return on investment this spring. Here are three questions Ferrie answered in detail:
1. Question: “Where would you rank the value of updating the closing wheel system compared to other planter attachments?”
Answer: Ferrie says before ranking anything, you need to know what problem you’re trying to solve. Today, you can easily spend as much on planter attachments as you did on the planter itself. So, every attachment needs a clear purpose and a clear return.
Whenever a farmer asks him about new attachments, Ferrie always asks a question of his own: “What do you hope this investment will do for you?”
“Too often, the honest reply is, ‘I don’t know, but I saw it on social media or at a farm show and it looked interesting,’” Ferrie notes.
He explains if you’re routinely evaluating corn stands and can see that your current closing system is not doing the job — there’s poor trench closure, sidewall smearing issues, uneven emergence — then upgrading that system can offer a strong ROI. But if your real limiting factor is row-unit downforce, leading to uneven depth and sidewall smearing, then changing the closing wheels won’t move the needle like fixing the downforce will.
Ferrie says if he had to pick “the top advancement” for corn stand establishment, it would be hydraulic downforce systems that both push and lift, and adjust on the go.
“Those systems, both in conventional and no-till situations, have done a lot to improve stands by maintaining consistent depth and reducing sidewall problems,” he says.
2. Question: “How can I evaluate my stand to identify if my closing system is an issue?”
Answer: Ferrie says good stand evaluation doesn’t start weeks after crop emergence. Instead, it starts at the planter.
“Ground-truthing your planter performance at planting can prevent a lot of stand issues later on,” Ferrie says. “This practice needs to be done on multiple rows across the planter, and in multiple soil types within the field.”
Ferrie’s recommendation: stop the planter several times in each field, get out and dig a cross-section across the furrow. In that crosscut, you’re looking for several problems that might need to be corrected.
A “perfect” cross-section, Ferrie says, is one where there’s no evidence of sidewalls standing, and no dry soil or air pockets are surrounding the seed.
He also reminds growers that the first 12 hours after planting, when the seed imbibes water, are critical. Dry soil around the seed in that window of time will delay water uptake and slow emergence.
Once the corn crop is out of the ground, shift your evaluation process to stand uniformity. At this point, Ferrie recommends doing plant counts and writing your observations down for future reference.
“Pay special attention to plants that are more than one collar behind their neighbors,” he says. “Those lagging plants should be dug up and examined.”
3. Question: “Can you put too much downforce on cast iron closing wheels?”
Answer: Yes, you definitely can, particularly in tilled or strip-tilled fields. Ferrie explains that excessive downforce on cast iron wheels can cause unnecessary compaction that young plants must fight through. The wheels can cut a deep trench in the furrow and push soil up into a ridge between the wheels.
This can create emergence problems in a couple of ways. If the spike doesn’t emerge dead center of the furrow, it may come up early off to the side, or it may attempt to leaf out underground if enough light filters down into the trench.
For plants that do emerge dead center, there’s another risk. As they break through that crown of soil pushed up by the closing wheels, they tend to set their crown roots about three-quarters of an inch below that raised ridge, Ferrie notes. If a heavy rain comes after emergence and flattens that ridge, those plants are effectively left with shallow crown roots — shallow corn that is more vulnerable to stress.
Be sure to check out Ferrie’s latest Boots In The Field podcast, where he offers additional answers to farmers’ planter and planting questions. Listen to it at the link below:
