The sins of a producer’s seed drill will follow him for at least a year, a Manitoba agronomist says.
That’s the opinion of Eric Gregory, of Morse Brothers, an ag retailer at Starbuck.
“We can often tell what seeder a guy has been using because his crop is all over the map,” said Gregory.
“And, we can tell when the seeder isn’t set up correctly.”
Gregory said that if openers at the front of the frame are seeding at a different depth than the openers at the trailing edge, the difference is visibly noticeable, row by row, by walking across the field.
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“We’ll go into a field and see some heads just emerging in one seed row,” he said.
“Some heads have already been out for a week in the next row. And maybe the next row has heads that will wait another week before they’re out. In a field like that, when do you tell the guy to spray for wild oats, much less a critically time-sensitive product like a fungicide?”
Research and experience in the high-yielding U.S. corn belt states has proven that uniform seed placement is necessary if a grower expects each high-investment corn plant to achieve top yield.
The corn grower’s rationale is that each plant must have equal access to soil moisture, sunlight and nitrogen applied to the field.
If the corn planter provides sloppy seed spacing, some plants will have an automatic advantage over the stragglers, which will fall further behind the leaders as the growing season progresses.
Gregory said perfect seeding uniformity hasn’t received as much attention on the Canadian Prairies, but he has no doubt that dryland cereals, canola and pulse crops cannot provide a good yield unless seeding equipment is close to perfect.
Prairie growers use a dense crop canopy as a weapon in their fight against weeds. If the crop gets up and establishes itself well enough to shade the weeds, the crop takes better advantage of the sun, moisture and nutrients.
The other side of the coin is watching half of a seeded crop grow early to form a good canopy, only to be turned into a weapon against runt plants that emerge later.
Gregory said the problem also affects harvesting, storing and marketing the crop.
“If you have two or three stages, especially if it’s on a row by row spacing, which stage do you pick as the one you want to go through your combine? The problems that started at the seeder follow you for a long time.”
