39 Follow us on Twitter: @PrairieFarming Better Farming | April 2024 PREPARING SEEDING EQUIPMENT There are limited days now to prep your air seeder. By Ashley Kaminski, with Dena Burnett The 2024 seeding season is fast approaching in Saskatchewan and there may be limited days left to complete spring preparations on your air seeder. There’s nothing worse than having to stop the drill because of a plugged section or uneven emergence a few weeks after planting, just to realize that a section of your drill was seeding an inch deeper than the rest. As an agronomist, some of these issues appear later, in calls with producers, when it can be difficult to narrow down mechanical problems. I have teamed up with the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) in Humboldt, Sask. to provide growers with a few considerations to help prepare their seeding equipment this spring while the toolbox is nearby. Check that your drill is level Unlevel air seeders or faulty hydraulic lines are the cause of many inquiries received by agronomists in the early weeks of crop emergence. Every manufacturer provides different specifications, features, and procedures for levelling and operating your drill, so consult your owner’s manual. This should be performed at the beginning of every season. As an initial check, ensure that the drill tires are all inflated to manufacturer specifications. Open the drill to operating position and park it on a flat, level surface with the openers lowered to between one inch above and just touching the ground. Using the vertical distance between the opener tips and the drill frame, you can make any coarse adjustments here. Next, move to the field and find a level, minimally disturbed section where you can lower the openers into the ground and make a short approximately 100-foot pass. Leaving the openers engaged in seeding position, get out and check the seeding depth across your machine and make any additional adjustments according to the manufacturer’s instructions. No matter what brand of drill you operate on your farm, the important thing is to make sure your drill is level both from front to back and from side to side across all sections. If your drill is not level, potential issues you may experience are uneven emergence or no emergence at all in a section. One nice thing about mechanical errors in the field is that they typically show up in a pattern of some kind. Check openers for excessive wear This is open to some interpretation on when it’s exactly time to make the switch. However, if you are regularly Ag Insights Tabletop fields makes setting up your drill straightforward. However, this is not the case for all of Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan Ministry of Ag photo
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