Preparing Your Land For Spring
As the winter starts coming to an end, it’s time to start preparing your newly-thawed land for spring planting. Everyone’s lists of preparatory tasks are different, depending on the climate, the type of land, and the crops that will be planted. But everyone needs to properly prepare the land to make a welcome bed for spring crops, which is essential to having a successful harvest come autumn.
If you’re not quite sure where to start or you would like a refresher, this guide by Arnold’s Inc of Minnesota will get you started with the process.
Inspect Your Equipment
Regardless of the time of year, testing your farm equipment and ensuring it works well is vital to your farm’s success. Your tractors, tillers, cultivators, and other tools will have been in storage for months and likely need lubrication, fresh oil, and some tune-ups to function properly. Clean off any debris and oil that may have accumulated on your agricultural equipment as well.
Next, you should inspect every piece of farm equipment from top to bottom to ensure it’s in good working order. Test out brakes, lights, and signals to make sure they function without issue. Check the batteries to make sure connections are tight and that there isn’t any corrosion on the posts. Adjust tire air pressure as necessary. Look for any equipment parts that may have been damaged last season that need replacement now.
Test and Prepare The Soil
Whether you’re planting a small garden plot or several acres of fields, you’re going to need to test the soil and prepare it to receive those seeds. Take some samples from a few different parts of the plot and run pH tests on them. Kits exist for this purpose that you can purchase to do the testing yourself or you can send the samples to a local lab. Knowing the pH of your land will help you make more informed choices on ways you can improve growth and keep your crops healthy.
You have several options for preparing the soil itself once you’ve completed the test. For example, cultivators can be extremely helpful to break up hard-packed soil that froze over during the winter. Remove any weeds by the root so they don’t overwhelm tender new sprouts. Mow any grass and thoroughly till the plot to turn up fresh soil.
Perform Regular Maintenance
Performing thorough farm equipment maintenance now could save you from expensive professional services later in the season - which can come from working with machines that have fallen into disrepair. You also don’t want your agricultural equipment to break down in the middle of the field when you’re halfway through a task, forcing you to tow it off the fields and into a mechanic’s shop where it might take several days to be repaired.
Lubricate the various agricultural equipment’s moving parts on a regular basis and check fluid levels, like oil and coolant, to make sure they’re in good condition and topped off. Charge up batteries, sharpen blades and check hoses, too. You’ll need to keep an eye on your tires since it’s easy to run over something that flattens them when working on the farm. Check the tire pressure and keep them aired up so your machines move smoothly.
Choose Your Crops
Finally, once you’ve completed all the above tasks, you’ll be ready to choose your crops for the season. The type of land you’re farming and the particular climate zone you’re in will impact this choice significantly. Check out the costs for each commodity so you know how much you’ll spend and how much you can expect to get for any crops you sell. Do research to determine what will work best for your land, your budget and your climate zone.
We hope you’ve found this guide helpful! If you need farm equipment, head over to Arnold’s Inc and explore our selection of agricultural equipment for sale. We proudly serve those throughout Minnesota.