WHEAT PLANTING 2017
Wheat planting season will soon be upon us and it is important to plan ahead before putting the first seed in the ground. The previous crop has a part to play in planting this year’s wheat.Read more
LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES
For the most part planting has concluded in Southwestern Ontario. If everything has gone perfectly for you this spring, great! I congratulate you! However, for most of us, we can look back at this planting season and find at least one example for where things didn’t go quite as they should have. Its human nature for us to want to forget about these blunders and move on, but sometimes valuable knowledge can gained by reviewing. And if you are like me, you should be going out and documenting these problems now, and finding corrective actions to avoid them next season. By the time fall, or next year rolls around, you may have long forgotten about the causes of these issues. So get out there and scout your fields.
FILTERS
As I find the 2016 seeding season winding down. I wanted to highlight a very important stress saving investment when using a liquid fertilizer such as Alpine G22.
SPRING IS HERE
Make sure you circulate your ALPINE tanks if it has been stored over winter
Using air at about 7 psi works well – 1 hr per 3000 gals
GETTING YOUR PLANTER (OR DRILL) FIELD READY FOR SPRING
For a lot of growers seeding/planting is literally just around the corner (and may have already started depending on what part of Western Canada you live in). One of the most important aspects of spring for a farmer is getting his equipment ready for the field and in my part of the world (Eastern Manitoba), the most important piece of equipment to get ready is the planter.
IMPORTANCE OF PROPER EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE AND PRODUCT HANDLING
We all know too well how important it is to make sure all our rates are correct when seeding or spraying but sometimes we get so busy we will let a few things slide; this is never a good idea as it will always come back to bite us. Improper application rates will cost us money!!! Sometimes to double and triple check things is never a bad idea, it will pay dividends in the long run.
GETTING TANKS READY FOR 2016
As the 2015 growing season come to an end, we start to already prepare for the 2016 season ahead.
As I travel through my territory calling on existing and potential customers, Storage tanks are part of an ongoing conversation.
WINTERIZING THE ALPINE KIT
As we enter into fall and colder weather, I often get the question from customers, what do I need to do to winterize my Alpine kit? It’s really as simple as blowing the system out with compressed air to clear the manifolds and lines and making sure your pump is also ready for the cold. Here is a list of steps you can use to prepare your Alpine kit for winter.
FALL TANK FILL
While spending some time in the combine on my own farm one beautiful harvest evening a few days ago, I was able to take the time to scroll through some headlines on The Western Producer website when one caught my eye. The article, “Finding best time to buy fertilizer” (http://www.producer.com/2015/09/finding-best-time-to-buy-fertilizer/), focused mainly on the fact that in 19 out of 20 years nitrogen fertilizer and all fertilizers in general (including liquid starter phosphate fertilizers such as ALPINE G22) are typically at their lowest point all year from mid-summer to early fall. The study went on to state that it wasn’t by a small margin either as the variation in prices can be as low as 50 percent off spring prices but conservatively 35 percent is a good number to use in terms of savings.
SIMPLE IS SOMETIMES BETTER
In today’s farming world, equipment is getting quite complex. Sometimes it pays to keep things simple. In the case of Alpine’s G22 application kits, simple IS better. In a matter of a day, a kit can be put on most drills to supply each furrow with highly available ALPINE G22 phosphorus. A manifold run is put near each tower and a small supply tube follows each seed tube to the shanks. Each seed bed is provided with a constant stream of readily available ALPINE G22 phosphorus and any blend of micros you see fit.
