Podcast: Big Planter Upgrades for Big Results - Johnny Verell Reveals The Changes He Made to His Planter in 2024 and the Results He Saw

00:00:00 Big planter changes at Rell Farms. We're telling you about the changes that Johnny Rell made to his planter and 00:00:05 how you might consider doing the same thing for big results. Welcome to Extreme ags Cutting the Curve podcast, 00:00:12 where real farmers share real insights and real results to help you improve your farming operation. This episode is brought to you by Simon Innovation, 00:00:21 protect your crops and maximize yield with a full lineup of innovative precision tools engineered 00:00:27 to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of your sprayer. Visit simon innovations.com and start getting more ROI out of your sprayer. 00:00:35 And now here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of Extre as Kinda Curve. 00:00:41 It's gonna be a great time 'cause we're talking about Planters. If you get, if you geek out about 00:00:45 Planters, you're gonna love this. Johnny Verell's made some big changes. We talked about it previously 00:00:49 and then we are now covering it 'cause of the results. We're recording this mid to late season for him. It's August, 2024 00:00:56 and is the first year that he did some big changes. He removed precision planting from his, uh, his operation. Uh, he consolidated his planters from three 40 00:01:07 footers to two 60 footers, if I remember right. So he's got the same amount of footage coverage, which then would require a change in horsepower, 00:01:14 if I'm not mistaken, although he's the expert, not me. So we're talking about tractor changes, planter changes, and then what is acts not just planter size, 00:01:21 but also what's on the back of the planter, uh, in furrow. Not in furrow. It's got a whole bunch of stuff going on. 00:01:28 And I'd like to say, Johnny, the, the precipitation of this, the reason this came about was 00:01:32 because I think a year ago one of your guys parked one of your planters along a, a gravel road and it was on a hill and it flipped over. 00:01:40 I think that's what inspired your entire planter changes was you had a total planter. 00:01:46 Yeah, that's right. And I mean we had a, we had a planter get pretty much destroyed during the first week of planting. 00:01:52 So we got knocked out and you know, we called around and we were used to running Precision plant and we had inferring two by two 00:01:59 and our local dealer had a John Deere planter that was a high speed planter with nothing on it. And, you know, we started using our product 00:02:05 through Mary Stem called hhr. And so it worked out perfect 'cause we took that product, put it on the C 00:02:13 and actually did some trials with it to see side by side comparisons there. And basically brave able still do our infer program just 00:02:20 with a hopper box treatment. And so that kind of told me right there, you know, hey, do we still need all this infer stuff? 00:02:25 Do we still need, you know, these type things? And what I realized is infer still has a place on my farm. I just needed to get to a system 00:02:34 that had local support from a, you know, standpoint of being able to come out and have me work on it and less complicated. 00:02:40 So, you know, we started working with Deere last summer and uh, basically we're able to get an integrated in furrow two 00:02:47 by two system completely plumed from the factory. And that includes the pumps mounted on the planter. So like when we unhook a tractor, I'm not having 00:02:54 to unhook pumps and hydraulic pumps off the tractor. It's basically just a true planter connection, unplug it and go and, you know, hook 00:03:01 that tractor up to something else. So that was a big deal for us. But it, it is kind of weird how it happened. 00:03:06 You know, we, we realized we could get a lot of our infer stuff through this hopper throttle product on soybeans and corn. 00:03:12 And then we also realized, well, when we were still adding some of our infer stuff to that product, we still got a good result or a good return. 00:03:19 So we stuck with it and we still, you know, we're still running infer and two by two on our corn right now. So, yeah. 00:03:25 Now wait a minute. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get into all that. But first off, the hopper throttle, 00:03:28 uh, product from aem, right? Right. Okay. And what it does is it gives you all the stuff that an infer program would've had, 00:03:36 but you're dumping it on the seed. So you, you, you take their bucket and you punch the holes in it and it comes very easy. 00:03:41 I demonstrated it at, uh, Matt Miles Field day in a video. Dear listener, if you wanna see what this is about. 00:03:46 And also at Commodity Classic that I think Johnny Rell was the person that, um, interviewed, uh, where we talked about that. 00:03:53 So you, you basically, you get this bucket, you punch it, and all those products then mix 00:03:57 and you dump 'em on your seed. That's it. That replaces a true inro where you've got nine different things on your planter 00:04:07 feeding into the, in, into the frow. Correct. Yeah. And I mean if you, if you wanna say nine things, you can get six of 'em 00:04:14 or five of 'em through this bucket so you can still add some more things if that's what you want to do. 00:04:18 And really what we're doing is, is, you know, if you wanna talk about corn for a second, you can get zinc through the Maris stem bucket, you know, and, 00:04:24 and it can be a zinc in for a replacement. But zinc is one of the nutrients on my farm that I have a hard time getting enough in the plants. 00:04:31 So I still put like say a quarter zinc infer plus the hawker throttle with the zinc on the seed to try to get a, 00:04:38 a higher rate infer on that seed. And it's really paid off. We're seeing real good results doing that 00:04:42 through our tissue samples this year. I just heard you say though, before, uh, my last question that you also about two by two, you 00:04:49 and I recorded an episode a year or two ago where you said you were removing all two by two from your farm because with the sand soils 00:04:59 and the fact that you're a reduced tillage, the amount of debris that every few hundred acres, thousand acres, whatever it was, your guys had 00:05:07 to back the planter up into the shop and change 'em all out because it basically was just like taking it out there 00:05:13 and wi whittling it down. Now you just said you got two by two, I thought you went away from two by two. Oh, 00:05:18 I'm, I guess what I'm calling two by two now. It's more of a generic term. I'm, I'm going along the temple approach 00:05:24 and what Chad Henderson's running, which is temple's, YouTube, I'm not running Temples YouTubes, but I'm dribbling on top of the ground 00:05:31 and it's, uh, like you were talking about, we were running a knife style system before and just our soil type in a no-till environment, 00:05:37 it was real hard to pull the planters. We were running 24 row planters and you were pulling 48 00:05:42 of those knives in the ground an inch and a half deep. And on top of that we were burning 'em off so fast in our soil type 00:05:48 'cause it's a pretty much true no-till soil type. It was real hard to pull. And you know, it is a cost standpoint, 00:05:54 it was something always we're having to work on. We had to figure out some way to simplify our lives. So for us, we decided we were gonna simplify. 00:06:00 We were going from 20 inch, 24 row planters that are 40 foot to 24 row planters on thirties. 00:06:05 And we went to two of 'em. So we had less stuff, less planters to work on and just really simplified our life across our farm. 00:06:12 And so like when we bring 'em into work on 'em in the, you know, in the off season or during the season when we're having to tune 'em back up, 00:06:19 it, it was just a less time consuming process for us is one of the main reasons we did it. Say what you just said again. 00:06:25 You went from 30 inch rows to 24 inch rows and you all, uh, We were, we were 20 inch corn. 00:06:32 Yes. 20 inch speeds on, so it was a 40 foot planter had 24 rows. Yes. But then when we went to 30 inch planters, 00:06:39 it's a 24 row planter. 'cause it's 60 foot now. So it's the same amount of rows, but I, I reduced it by one whole planter too. 00:06:47 So it's actually less units to work on and everything like that. So it but you went From 20 inch rows of corn to thirties? 00:06:52 Yes. Yeah. Where we are here in West Tennessee is cotton is kind of the reason that twenties is such a big thing here. 00:06:59 And so people can plant 40 inch cotton, 20 inch corn, 20 inch beans with one planter. So we were kind of falling that same switch step 00:07:06 for a resale value and stuff like that. But you know, you get into, when you start doing infer and you start doing two by two 00:07:13 and you get these narrow row spacing, it's like twenties or fifteens. It is a whole lot of stuff going on on a planter when you 00:07:19 start wearing wiring harnesses. Yeah. You buy the infer supply two by two supply, it's a lot of things moving. 00:07:24 And so when we went to thirties, it gave us more room and like I said, deer now offers from the factory a complete turnkey process to get infer 00:07:33 and two by two from the factory. And that to me means something because they know where to run it, they know where 00:07:38 to put the wiring harnesses, they know how to clean it out. So one of the things I liked about that was with the, 00:07:44 what we had before, which was precision was there was no good way to flush the system out. 00:07:48 Yep. Deer has a built in flush system so we can flush out some of that every night. You have found that your system being all from the 00:07:56 factory, which a lot of our guys, a lot of the extreme ag guys are doing post factory stuff and lots of add-ons and suffixes 00:08:03 and changes that works for them. And it, and it may happen for you, but in this regard you like it 00:08:09 that it's all same manufacturer and same system for your new, um, your new plant. By the way, if you're, if you're listening to this 00:08:17 and you're like, wait a minute, Johnny went away from two by two, I wanna get back to that 00:08:20 because that's an episode that we recorded a couple of years ago. So you can just go back and check it out if you go 00:08:24 to extreme Ag Farm and you can search for it. But it was an interesting topic because so many farm operations weren't even to the point 00:08:34 where they were doing two by two in the traditional sense and they were considering it 00:08:40 and here he was, Vall is saying, I'm taking mine off. And it was because of all the reasons the the the wear and tear and the the time 00:08:47 and the slowness, all those things. So now your answer to go and speak to that a little bit, is that a deer thing 00:08:54 or is that a Rell Farms modifications where you've got it is still dripping product. Mostly fertility, I think at two inches away from the sea, 00:09:04 the seed trench. But it's not going subterranean, it's dribbled across the top. Is that, how's that working? 00:09:12 That's exactly right. So Deere doesn't offer the kit that actually does the dribbling. They offer all the plumbing and the valves 00:09:19 and the control meters and stuff like that. It's all mounted on the planter. We added a little short piece of hose 00:09:24 and we're dribbling right behind the planter. And like I said, it's a, it's just an aftermarket kit we bought that. 00:09:29 Both are right on. And you're right, we're not incorporating it in the soil, but we're mainly doing nitrogen is 00:09:34 what we're doing uh, at planting now. And so we're doing nitrogen and some IC and stuff like that is what we're trying to put out. 00:09:41 And so dribbling those on top of the soil is working really well for us. And I mean it just comes down to, you know, not, 00:09:47 not saying one company's not as good as another 'cause some people might have, you know, great support that's real local that could come work on it, 00:09:54 but for us it, you know, my John Deere dealer is seven miles from it. Yep. So when I have an issue, 00:10:00 they're right here to help me out. And so that was the big thing and, and when we made the decision that we were gonna go 00:10:04 to two planters, that's when I said, well look, now that Deere offers this from the factory, I'm going all Deere. 00:10:10 Whereas before Deere did not offer this. When we built our life planters and we, we bought three brand new planters, 00:10:16 stripped 'em completely down and put precision top to bottom on and were able to make that work. 00:10:21 It was just a lot more work in progress all throughout the year. And so we had, we had to simplify some 00:10:26 things. Dam that's the big thing. I wanna talk to you about the size, uh, adjustment. I wanna talk to you about some of the results. 00:10:32 Uh, and also any of the growing pains to go to the bigger planners. Before I do that, uh, you just talked about fertility, 00:10:39 I wanna remind our listeners that Nature's is one of our business partners here at Extreme Ag. In fact, if you are an extreme Ag member, 00:10:43 it's only 750 bucks a year, seven 50 bucks a year. You can listen to all of our stuff for free. You can attend the webinars for free. 00:10:50 You can come to our field days for free. But if you wanna take it to the next level for seven $50 a year, very little, you get direct access 00:10:56 to guys like Johnny and a question answer, uh, uh, platform. You also get the data at the end of the year, 00:11:02 the trial data that these guys are doing. You also get special offers. You know what, for the last two years nature's our business 00:11:08 partner has paid for the uh, extreme ag members. If they choose to attend Commodity Classic. That's right. Free admission to the commodity Classic. 00:11:15 If you're an an extreme ag members, just one of the other things you might do. So anyway, we like our friends over there at Nature, 00:11:20 they're focused on providing sustainable farming solutions to help you on your farming operation. 00:11:24 There are products powered by nature's bio cake can target specific periods of influence. You hear the guys all the time talking about that dribbling 00:11:31 spoonfeeding, putting fertility where it needs to be. So throughout the growing season, your uh, use of nature's products can help you put precision fertility 00:11:39 right where it needs to be for plant stress mitigation, to enhance your yields and of course to enhance your farm's. ROI so that this farming operation that you love 00:11:48 so much can be there for your next generation. Um, alright, growing pains going from three to two planters simplifies only two things that keep running. 00:11:58 Also, when one of 'em goes down, now you're at 50% capacity, whereas before, if one of 'em went down, 00:12:04 you still had 66% capacity, you were still running. Did you have a, did you have a, you know, the old factories, like I used to work in a factory. 00:12:12 This plant has not had a lost time accident. Do you have any lost time breakdowns? Yeah, if you're gonna run two by two, you're gonna run in 00:12:19 for those products. The, the equipment itself might not be what's breaking down, but there's stuff that comes along. 00:12:24 Cleaning filters, cleaning the system out, stuff like that. So yeah, we still have those issues. 00:12:28 We did not have any major breakdown that that took us out for a day or anything like that. 00:12:33 And you know, and you know, I think a lot of people think about, oh well I'm putting 30 gallons of two by two out or whatever the number is you're doing, 00:12:39 they're thinking about the amount of fill that that is for us, the fill up is the easy part. It's, it's the equipment. 00:12:45 Keeping it running was always the harder part. So, you know, for us, you know, we, we just simplified everything and 00:12:51 and it really had a pretty flawless planting season. We were extreme. Go Ahead. Okay, so, 00:12:56 uh, what about the tractor situation? You're a large enough farmer that it's, you changing tra you change some tractors out every couple 00:13:04 of years anyhow, presumably, I don't know if you're leasing, buying, whatever, that's the, you had to change tractors 00:13:10 because to pull a 60 versus a 40, it's you needed, you know, 25, 40, 50. 00:13:16 We actually ran the same tractors. We're pulling these 60 footers with three 40 deers, um, 83 40 deers. 00:13:22 And I mean, you gotta remember where on we had 24 rows on the old planters. Yeah, it was 40 foot. Now we're still just pulling 24 00:13:30 rows on these planters. So the size of the planter, the size of the planter because it's wider isn't really that much different 00:13:36 because it might be a touch heavier but still you're, you're chugging through the same amount of rows. Yeah, And I mean and we were doing a knife system 00:13:44 before that caused a lot of drag on the tractor. Now we're dribbling so it kind of was a, an even washer, it is actually easier to pull. 00:13:50 We're able to plant pretty much whatever speed we wanna plant just 'cause we've got high speed planters. Doesn't mean we're planting everything 10 miles per hour. 00:13:56 But we were able to run the speeds we need to. And you know, I I would say one of the biggest challenges we had when we went 00:14:02 to these bigger planters, 'cause we didn't realize how much farther behind the transport wheels are on the planter. 00:14:09 So you've been out to our place. A lot of our roads can be narrow in places and that was one of the biggest challenges we had is we went 00:14:15 to go plant and realized we couldn't get in some of the fields 'cause the entrances weren't wide enough or there was a ditch, we couldn't swing over far enough 00:14:22 because in reality you're, you're, you're basically an 18 wheeler in length when you go to this. 00:14:27 So that was, I would say you brought up challenges long ago. That was probably one of the biggest challenges we had. 00:14:32 We had a few fields we had to actually just go ahead and leave out, bring some equipment in, make the entrances wider so we could get in. 00:14:38 But, but other than that it really, it was pretty flawless. I mean just, just how you know, 00:14:43 turnkey the process is now is a big deal for us. I mean, like I said before, we were always having to mount pumps 00:14:49 and run extra hydraulic lines. This right here is really just plug and play and and go plant. 00:14:55 Interesting that the biggest problems you tend to have with planters are actually on the road. Uh, you park 'em on the side of a hill on a road 00:15:03 and they flip over you, you run into stuff going down. Okay. And also what's interesting, you talk about narrow roads, 00:15:10 you are literally almost a suburban farmer. You've got, uh, you know, you'd think that your problem would be that you're having 00:15:16 to drive on highways because you're uh, in such a densely in a populated area. Okay. On the, 00:15:23 and this is probably the last couple of topics about this on the results, okay, this is the first year you ran 'em. 00:15:29 When you go out and walk in that field, is there any difference spacing, uh, population, uh, the way it impacted your soil? 00:15:37 Is there any perceivable difference of changing up your planter system from way it was three years ago when you were traditional two by two, 00:15:43 you were smaller planters, you were 20 inch rows, you got these deers, you're a 30 inch row, you've got this, their entire system on the back dribble, 00:15:52 et cetera. Any difference? Yeah, I would say the biggest difference, going back to thirties that we were kind 00:15:58 of fighting a little bit on twenties is the residue. So when we're planting in either soybeans or or corn following the year 00:16:04 before corn crop, you got so much residue there and you put those units, you know, 20 inches apart. You know, people fight it all the time on 15 inch beans too, 00:16:11 but you're having a, when you run high speed, you're throwing that residue so fast a lot of times it wants to overthrow and throw the residue on the road beside it. 00:16:19 That's one thing we really did see. We really liked how the residue flowed through a 30 inch planter. 00:16:24 And so for us, we actually planted our full season beans that we plant into of March. 00:16:28 You know, first couple weeks of April. They're own thirties. Our corns on thirties and are actually our double crop 00:16:33 soybeans that are planted behind wheat. You know, the first week of June, second week of June are planted on thirties too. 00:16:39 And so far, you know, we haven't started harvest Dana, so we might have some disasters out there or something that we haven't, we are not visually seeing 00:16:46 but, you know, weed pressure, all that stuff's been good. And, and, and really I'll just go back to the residue thing. 00:16:51 The way that the planters were able to handle the residue was a big deal for us this year. And we really liked how when we were moving 00:16:56 that residue out, it wouldn't touching that other row beside it. The 20 inch row thing is more specific to where you are. 00:17:02 That's not something that you would see probably in the, in the more traditional corn belt. 00:17:07 But for those people that are from where you're part of the world that are listening, that's, that's probably a bigger deal than I would think about. 00:17:14 If you're going fast at 20 inch rows, you're flinging stuff and covering up the seed bed that's just uh, 20 inches over. 00:17:21 That's kinda what you're saying, right? Yeah. And I I I think we don't realize, you know, and I guess sometimes you'll go out there 00:17:26 and you'll see corn plants that are kind of yellow. A lot of times you get to looking, they're actually touching residue. 00:17:30 Whether it's wheat straw from the year before or corn stalks from the year before, or bean, you know, whatever it is. 00:17:35 You don't, you need, you don't need that residue touching that plant when it's coming up. 00:17:39 There's a lot of disease that can just hop right over and that's just something else you're having to fight that you don't have to, you, 00:17:44 you just gotta be able to move it. And it's a fine line where we are. 'cause we can get so aggressive with grow cleaners 00:17:49 that we can actually dig a fur going through the field even in a no-till environment and then when it rains it goes right 00:17:55 down that causes the issue. So it's a fine line on how all that works, but I really think what we've seen this year, 00:18:00 once we've got 'em all set up like we wanted, it's, it's been a good deal for us. Seed to soil contact is 00:18:04 obviously what you're talking about though. That that, okay. One other thing. For the people that are more in your part of the world 00:18:09 where you get a hundred degree temperatures, do you think that you lose moisture with a wider row 00:18:15 than a a a 20 inch row is gonna canopy a month sooner, two weeks sooner. Two weeks sooner in the summer, your part 00:18:23 of the world could be the equivalent of five inches of precipitation because it's a hundred degrees. Am I right? 00:18:29 Yeah, it it can And and I'm not gonna say you don't lose moisture. I I think you do. If sunlight's hitting 00:18:35 the ground, you're losing moisture. Right. Or people say if sunlight's hitting the ground, you're not cap capturing that sunlight. 00:18:40 I agree with that. But you know, one thing that we've been playing with the last few years on our farm with skip row corn and we're not doing it 00:18:47 across the whole farm yet. We're getting closer to figuring out exactly how it works, but we're getting yield increases with skip row corn. 00:18:53 Yeah. And I and that's, that's be a topic for another day because I don't even know what that, I'm just talking about you were 00:18:57 tying it into the, the thirties. I don't Even know what that means. So you're gonna tell about that? We'll 00:19:01 We'll talk about but I'm just saying like what we're saying is, is I think on twenties where we are in the south, 00:19:05 like you were talking about the high temperatures we have. Yeah. I think that canopy's so tight we get no air flow. 00:19:10 It actually could be heartless. So I think the thirties lets that corn plant breathe and yeah you can let sun in and all that stuff. 00:19:16 That can happen. But most of the time once our corn crop canopy there no sunlight getting in, but it's still allowing that plant 00:19:23 to breathe a lot better than it does on twenties or fifteens. So I think, okay, so you could make the argument 00:19:27 that while you're losing some moisture because of the lack of canopy, you also are increasing airflow, which probably helps 00:19:33 with in your, in your temperature and humidity conditions, some fungicide and some disease issues also 00:19:38 because airflow keeps maybe the plant healthier. Yeah, I I think just letting that plant breathe it could be paying off. 00:19:44 And that's where I was mentioning the skip row. I think we're seeing some of the yield response we're seeing is airflow. 00:19:50 Alright, we're talking about big planter changes at Verl farms and the results, uh, mistakes. 00:19:54 Did you make any, now that you've made your adjustments, you've gone to 30 inches, you've gone to an all deer setup, 00:19:59 you don't have the precision planning on the back and, and it just is the way it works for you. You went away from traditional two by two, 00:20:04 now you dribble out going through all this, you went to, you went to two planters versus three, 00:20:10 um, you're happy. Did you make any mistakes? Is there anything, is there anything that you're like, hey, 00:20:16 one one adjustment we had to make was this after we realized that this was a mistake? Yeah, I mean I I would say that, you know, one 00:20:24 of the biggest things is, is I wasn't as exactly happy with my closing system that I had. So we added back, um, a closing system 00:20:32 by precision back on there and it seemed to really, it's what I wanted. And so for our area, that was one 00:20:37 of the biggest things I thought we could get away with it. But what we saw last year, we wanted to go back to that 00:20:42 precisions closing system. There are two safe closing systems. So I would say the biggest thing that that is, 00:20:47 is it's hard to buy. That's the worst part about buying a planter. You buy a planter in the winter and you get it set up 00:20:52 or you rebuild a planter. And when it's go time, it's not like you can go out there in February and play. It's always too muddy where we are. 00:20:58 But April 1st when it's go time, you're just having to go with what you got and make it work 00:21:02 and then you can change it going in the next year. But overall we put a lot of thought into it because that was a big investment for us 00:21:08 to change out like we did. And I'm, we're real happy with what we've done. So you did do you do have a little bit 00:21:14 of aftermarket stuff in the closing system? That's Right. That's the biggest we changed back. 00:21:18 And you're saying the person in Nebraska might, it's probably condition specific and that's what you found out once 00:21:27 you started rolling in April. Like okay, the one thing I'd like to change is this closing system and make that work. 00:21:33 That's right. That's right. Got it. All right. Big planter change that all farms get me out here. The person that wants to make big planter changes on their 00:21:42 farms or they need to know, I think we go back to, you need to go back out and start networking and find out what's working in your 00:21:48 area that other people have already tried. 'cause I have learned what I think works in my area is not working at Kelly Garson 00:21:54 his hill so, or you know, his hill country. So for me is that and just, just really planters one 00:21:59 of the most important if not the most important part on the farm because you gotta get that crop started off right. 00:22:04 So take your time, plan it out and pay attention to the details. His name's Johnny Rell. My name's Damien Mason. 00:22:10 Uh, I told you already about becoming a member extreme ag and, and you should at seven 50 bucks a year you get 00:22:15 all the things I already mentioned. Uh, you get trial and data and information at the end of the year from these guys. 00:22:21 Uh, you get direct access to people like Johnny on a question answer platform and you get special offers from our business partners. 00:22:27 Like for instance, you could maybe go to Commodity Classic for free. That's just some of the great stuff. 00:22:31 You get an entire library of content videos that people like Johnny and the other guys have shot on your farms. 00:22:38 Hundreds of these episodes, these podcasts. Go check it out, share it with somebody that can benefit from it. 00:22:43 And very much thank you for being here. Till next time, my name's Dam Mason. He's Johnny Rell. This extreme ag cutting the curve. 00:22:50 That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 00:22:58 of your farming operation. Cutting the curve is brought to you by Simon Innovations. 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