Thursday, March 14, 2013

This morning Brandon and I sat at the office computer to write soybean planting prescriptions.  As we began, I explained the agronomics behind the variable-rate planting concept.  You can find this information in the post for March 4, 2013 called “Prescriptions”.

We opened the Apex software, and then a soil map for the Shake farm…a location which will be planted to soybeans in 2013.  We began with a click on the ‘create’ button, and then we navigated the several steps to assign a planting rate to each soil type.  The new prescription map then is commanded to display in 3 colors– red, yellow, and green– corresponding to the areas where a low, medium, or high population is assigned.

Low=140,000 seeds/acre— Med=170,000 seeds/acre—High=190,000 seeds/ac

Soon, he was ready to click ‘save’ on the first prescription.  But, there are many more to create!   We have 4 varieties of soybeans this spring, so each field will require 4 prescriptions written for each!  It can get a little tedious and repetitious, but he’s pretty dedicated.  Brandon can complete this process as it fits into his school schedule over the next several days.

Here, Brandon is taking a soil map of the Cox farm and using it to create a new soybean planting prescription.   The “Joseph’s coat” color scheme showing the different soil types will become a red, yellow, green prescription map.

Brandon caught on to the system pretty quickly, and I’m happy to be sharing this task with him.  It will be helpful to have another person equipped to take care of this kind of information technology.

It is sunny and more pleasant outside today.  45°F and the wind is low.  We had many times of off-and-on snow flurries yesterday, and there was a blustery wind making outdoor work unpleasant.  Ross missed all that, and I don’t think he’s sad about it.  But he says his Florida days are winding down and he’ll be “back home again in Indiana” before long.

If you look at your calendar, you’ll see that spring arrives in 1 week!  Oh, the thought!  If the rain holds off, we will likely begin to apply some NH3 next week.