Before you pull your planter to the field, spend some time in the shop ensuring your gauge wheels are properly set.
“You want true contact with the disk opener,” Bauer says. “To test this, lift up the gauge wheel and when you let go, you should hear it rub down the disk.”
She says that if there’s a gap between the gauge wheel and disk opener, then the wheel will move back and forth. That gap could be large enough to allow soil to gather inside the wheel.
“Then as you move through the field, that dry dirt will be dropped in the seed trench and can cause problems with emergence,” Bauer explains.
Learn more in this episode of Corn College TV:
