by Bill Kletecka, Cuba City, WI

Planting has finally wrapped up in the south west corner of Wisconsin. Most of the corn and beans are up and looking fairly good. Some local areas have yet to see any rain for the last three weeks, and the crops are beginning to stress. Spraying post emerge has started on the corn ground that has weed escapes from the pre emerge or lack of rain to activate the chemicals. All of the rye crop has been taken off with the dry weather, with above average tonnage taken. Some customers have begun cutting first crop hay which also looks very good due to the recent warm weather.

With planting being done for the year, it is a good time to get the planters cleaned up and serviced for winter. Sloan Implement has a very attractive planter inspection program going on where we check over the planter for any worn or broken parts. Details of the inspection program can be found here.

When cleaning up your planter for the winter, here are a few tips to save some headaches next spring:

1. Drain the water from all compressor tanks before storage. It is something that should be done daily and it is very surprising how much water collects in the tanks from just a short amount of run time.

2. Clean out all seed from the boxes, mini hoppers, and CCS tanks. Rodents are always looking for food and they have the rest of the year to find it in your planter.

3. Clean out all fertilizer from the tanks. All products will eventually settle out of suspension, and most will freeze in smaller lines and then crack fittings. We recommend using RV antifreeze and flushing it through the system.

4. Store your seed disks out of the planter in the vertical position. I also recommend numbering the discs for the corresponding row that they were removed and also marking the position on the hub to insure that they are placed exactly in the same position in the row unit hub next year . This will help with wear on the disc from the hub not running perfectly true in the meter.

5. Take pictures of how the hydraulic hoses and also how wire harness’ are ran and what they are plugged into before unhooking everything. Using a smart phone or any other camera and saving the pictures for next year, will greatly reduce your hook up time and any possibility of hooking something up wrong and possibly damaging some components.