Preparing Your Field and Equipment For Spring Planting

Now that warm weather is upon us and the frost season is over, it’s time for farmers all across the United States to get their land ready for planting and their farm equipment ready for work. There are a number of tasks you’ll want to complete in order to ensure your success and garner high yields during the fall harvest. Some of these tasks include equipment maintenance and repair, soil testing and crop planning.

Central Arkansas Mahindra, located in Little Rock, is your Arkansas farm equipment dealer. Here are some steps we recommend that you take in order to ready your land and your farm equipment for spring planting.

Inspect & Repair Farm Equipment

First, you will want to remove all of your farm equipment from storage and perform thorough examinations of everything. Your equipment will need a little tender loving care to get it ready to work this spring since it’s been languishing in storage for months. The first step you should take is to wash and clean your farm machinery to remove dust, debris and dirt, especially caked-on mud from the fall.

Check fluid levels, changing oil and replenishing fuel tanks with fresh gasoline. Inspect the condition of your tires and fill them up to the manufacturer’s recommended psi levels. Sharpen blades and examine them for nicks. Test lights, signals and controls to make sure they’re functioning properly. Check any nozzles for clogs. Replace any worn or broken parts now before you try using your machine.

Test & Prepare Your Soil

Now it’s time to work on the land itself. Healthy, viable soil is essential to bountiful crop growth, which is why taking soil samples and sending them to a lab or performing tests at home with kits you order is so important. You’ll want to determine the texture of your soil and how many nutrients it contains already, as well as what nutrients you may need to add with fertilizer.

Once you know what condition your soil is in, you’ll need to turn it over to ensure that it’s not compacted so you can plant seeds. A tiller will help you to get the soil refreshed and chop up any organic debris that may linger from cover crops or weeds. Try not to compact soil too much by working it only when it’s fairly dry and by using less heavy equipment.

You can now apply fertilizer and other nutrients to your soil and make a schedule for when you will add fertilizer and perform tasks like weeding to keep your crops healthy.

Plan Your Crops

Finally, you’ll want to make some time to build a crop-planting schedule. The types of crops you’ll plant will depend on where you’re located. Arkansas is in plant hardiness zones 6 to 8, which means our final frost dates tend to be in mid-April and our first frost dates tend to be in mid-to-late October. Knowing the types of plants you’ll be cultivating will help you determine the proper fertilizers and the macro and micronutrients that your plants will need to give you a high yield. You can use a spreadsheet program or a phone app or a notebook and pen to plan out your year’s crops; whatever works best for you.

We hope that our guide helps you to get your farm all ready for spring planting. Need some new machines before you begin spring planting? Come see us at our dealership in Little Rock today to view our vast inventory of new and used farm equipment for sale. You can talk to our staff about our package deals as well. Central Arkansas Mahindra proudly serves the cities of Conway, Sherwood and Hot Springs, AR.