This winter we put together a new rig to apply nitrogen to corn. More than anything else nitrogen is what makes plants green and produces lots of grain.
We used to apply anhydrous ammonia to the corn for nitrogen. Anhydrous ammonia is a wonderful source of nitrogen, it’s inexpensive and it’s 82% nitrogen, so you don’t need apply a lot per acre. The downside is that anhydrous ammonia is incredibly lethal. It’s a liquid when under pressure, and when exposed to the atmosphere it turns to a gas and its temperature drops rapidly and it freeze-burns anything it touches. Anhydrous means ‘without water’ and anything it touches, it sucks the water out of. The result is a vicious burn on anything it touches: like your skin, or if you breathe it, your lungs.
Neither Lana nor I have any love of handling lethal chemicals, so the last couple of years we’ve been applying liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is only 28% nitrogen, so you have to handle a lot of it, and it costs more than anhydrous ammonia. But if you get some liquid nitrogen on you it’s just a sticky mess that you can wipe off with a damp cloth. It won’t hurt you.
We’d been renting a nitrogen applicator from our local fertilizer dealer, but like a rental car, a rental fertilizer applicator is not treated with a lot of care by those renting it. These applicators were usually beat to pieces and falling apart. Frustrated by using falling apart equipment that didn’t do a good job of applying nitrogen, this past winter we put together our own rig.
We’re about half done putting nitrogen on the corn this year, and I’m just as pleased as punch with the applicator we’ve built.
This is the applicator itself. It’s a toolbar attached to the 3 point hitch of the tractor. One thing to note here is the ground behind the applicator. You can’t see any disturbance in the soil. As fervent no-tillers we don’t want to disturb the soil and I love how you can walk behind this rig and hardly see where you’ve been. Do you like the reflective tape on the ends so our citidiot neighbors don’t run into us on the roads? Safety first is our motto.
The thingies here, the tubes with the green, red, dark red, and silver balls in them are flow monitors. The balls float as the liquid fertilizer flows through the tubes and if something gets plugged or quits working the balls aren’t floating and you’re aware there is a problem.
Now, if you look carefully at that picture, you’ll see a problem, not with the fertilizer flow though.
If you look carefully at where I’ve circled in red you’ll see a pin sticking out of the bracket on the end of the arm. That arm is the release lever for removing the applicator from the tractor. Just a few hours after I took this picture that pin fell out and the applicator came unhooked on that side. Lana was running it at the time and fortunately noticed it before anything bad happened. We were able to patch it up with baling wire and duct tape and get going again. Debbie pointed out that this is a perfect of example living life through a viewfinder as opposed to actually experiencing it. If I’d looked the applicator, instead of taking a picture of it, I would’ve noticed the pin about to fall out.
We use an Ag Leader monitor to control how much nitrogen we put on per acre. While I’m fundamentally opposed to gadetry, I have to admit this Ag Leader is pretty slick. No matter what speed you drive it puts on the same amount per acre. When you get to the edge of the field it automatically shuts off. It uses GPS to know how fast you’re going and where the end of the field is.
The nitrogen itself we carry in these tanks on the tractor. They hold 500 gallons, enough for about 14 acres. We have to refill about every hour and a half. That’s a lot of refilling, but it’s nice to get a break every 90 minutes. We bought these tanks used from a farmer I met on an online ag discussion board. They’re 30 years old and like new. Not a single ding or mark on them.
They’re the opposite of rental equipment, how you can use something for 30 years and not put a ding in it is beyond me.
With nothing but sunshine forecast we’re taking the weekend off (to write about farming as opposed to doing it) and come Monday we’ll be back in the corn fields putting on nitrogen.
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