How To Prepare Your Farm for Spring Planting

Now that spring is well underway, it’s time to get ready for planting season! Regardless of whether you’re planting seeds or starts, or planting a small plot or a large acreage, there is some preparatory work that you’ll need to do in order to ready your fields for planting.

Cliff Jones Mahindra Tractor, located in Sealy, is your Texas farm equipment dealer. Here are some of our top tips for getting your farm ready to go this spring.

What Do You Want To Accomplish?

First, think about your goal for this year’s harvest. The types of crops you want to plant will affect which parts of your property you need to prepare as well as the steps you’ll need to take. Certain seeds can go in the ground right now, while others may need to wait until summer is here. But keeping a goal in mind will help you to stay focused. Determine what will produce the highest yields and which types of hybrids you might want for where you live.

Do You Have a Calendar?

Having a calendar established can help you to keep track of when you need to plant what and how often you should tend your crops. Most of the country is well past the last frost date by now, so you shouldn’t have to worry about planting anything too early. It’s the perfect time to get most crops in the ground to ensure a bountiful fall harvest!

Tilling Your Fields

Conventional tillage methods will turn over your soil with the assistance of some handy farm machines to make planting seeds easier. Tilling also produces fresh soil and helps to eliminate residue and debris in the earth. Primary tillage makes use of a plow or other sturdy tool to break up most of the soil, while secondary tillage uses a less aggressive tool like a disc harrow to go over land that’s been tilled already. Before you do this, make sure you go through the area you’re tilling and remove large rocks, thick branches or other debris that might harm your farm equipment.

To Till or Not To Till?

Be forewarned that excess tilling can have a negative impact on soil quality, which is why some people choose instead to do without tilling. Working with the soil as it is after winter, you’ll create a furrow for planting and use a press wheel to close those furrows back up. Herbicides can help to kill weeds. Not every farm can use no-till farming methods, but it’s an eco-friendly method that is more sustainable and worth looking into.

Additional Means of Tilling

Finally, there are a few other ways you can till the land to ready it for spring. Conservation tillage involves using the organic matter like crop residue, leaves and grass to nourish newly-planted seeds. Ridge planting takes the ridges of previous harvests and uses them as a place to plant new seeds. Strip tilling removes the residue from previous crops to allow for planting seeds into flat ground.

We hope these tips help you get your farm up and running in no time flat! Need some new farm equipment to get the job done? Come see us at our dealership in Sealy today if you’d like to take a look at our full selection of new and used farm equipment for sale. You can also talk to our staff about our financing options if you’d like to use them. Cliff Jones Mahindra Tractor proudly serves the greater Houston metro region as well as the city of Victoria, Texas.