00:00 Most people don't actually have two by two set up on their planter, but we talk a lot about being forward-thinking being Progressive 00:06 minded and and being more efficient with your inputs and how you can do that through a two by two system and 00:12 then Along Comes a guy named Johnny verrell, welcome to extreme acts cutting the curve podcast where we 00:18 cut your learning curve with insights. You can apply immediately to your farming operation. This episode is presented by 00:24 Loveland products when it comes to crop inputs, you need products that are field proven to deliver both results and value for more than 50 years. Loveland 00:33 products has been providing Farmers with high performance value driven product Solutions designed to 00:39 maximize productivity on every acre visit Loveland products.com to see how their Innovative products can help you farm more profitably and now here's 00:48 your host Damian Mason. Hey there thanks for joining us for extreme mags cutting the curve got a great topic for you today. We're talking about taking the two by two out watch now, 00:57 we're not talking about Lumber. We're talking about two by Which is something I didn't even know what it was until 01:02 I started working with the guys from extreme AG couple of years ago. We're talking about inputs at time of planting 01:08 that is applied in the back of the planter two inches away from the row and two inches deep Johnny is 01:14 a Murray State racer. I've got the coffee cup here on my desk in case you're watching the video. You see it if you're listening to this on audio. I'm holding up 01:23 a Murray State Racers a couple which I keep around just for my buddy Johnny. So here's the deal. He's a he's in Tennessee farmer. He's 01:29 an affiliate with extreme Ag and he's pretty sharp dude. He's a business guy and he said 01:35 to me when we're talking about this. Oh, by the way, I took the two by two set up off my planner this year. I said, oh that's interesting considering that I 01:44 learned what this is we talked about how it's a great way to do stuff. You can put out a lot of different products because we're putting out a lot of stuff at time of planting and then Johnny we're also's 01:53 yeah, I took it off my planners. I said, well, I think that's a topic with better cover because here are most people are probably thinking if 01:59 they don't have They need it and he's going to say now. Maybe you don't. 02:03 Why did you take the two by two set off off your planter? Well, I guess in 2019. We put 02:10 it on the planner and we've experiment experimented with all kinds of products. 02:15 The the products weren't the issue that the equipment we were using for. I would say the soul type that we have on our farm. 02:23 Might be the biggest issue like we're we're pretty much strictly no till top of tiller system. So pulling two by two system if it's not a rolling blade or 02:33 anything like that it can cause some issues and we're using a particular brand that had knives that kind of stuck down. They're 02:39 sticking out an inch and a half two inches whatever we could do. And then we were running 24 row Planters. So 02:45 24 row Planters would turn into 48 Knobs sticking down. So you're pulling a lot of resistance going through the ground. So we were having a hard time 02:55 pulling them and just seemed like we're having to make our tractors or get bigger and bigger tractors to pull the same planter 03:01 and then just the biggest thing that was kind of like what was making it real hard on us is the longevity of the 03:07 knives, you know, one year seem like we went all year didn't have any issues and like last year. We made it 1500 acres and our knives or War completely out. 03:16 They're not hard to change out. They take a little bit of time but they're pretty expensive. So trying to figure out it we're probably 03:25 gonna go back to different two by two system. But the closing Wheels we have kind of limit the top two by two 03:31 system we have there's one of Temple sent me that's real basic and simple. That's probably what we're gonna go to with the closing Wheels. I have today don't allow 03:40 me to use that that's system that he has so we're gonna go back to dribble. We're gonna start dribbling on top of the ground Versus Knife and it or putting it 03:49 in the ground itself. Okay. So what's you said a lot of stuff and I wrote down some notes right there. So first off you have a no-till system for 03:58 the most part across all your acres and you're in Western West Central Tennessee. He said soil types. I don't think soil type. It's more system is 04:07 probably the issue right? Because the okay so we have to but we have so long so it has quite a bit of sand content and I don't know if that's what's causing more 04:17 of the wear on the knives. Just making the knives work as long as they're supposed to we're not able to do in our our soul time. Yeah, 04:25 so the sand it's an interesting thing. So sand is more abrasive like sandpaper. So sand might be wearing out your knives more versus if you 04:34 were in a you know, a clay loam or silt loam or something like that. So that's an interesting subject that most 04:40 people probably hadn't thought of or a reason but as you say, 04:44 Having to replace them. So it's kind of like, you know, at least a farm in the Rocks when I was a kid. We farmed a ground that nobody else 04:50 wanted which is why we had it because we didn't come from well off background. We had to replace the shoes on our cultivators a 04:56 lot more because they get the hell broke, you know broken up and beaten up so it's kind of same thing, but that's not the biggest reason you obviously did 05:02 it because it didn't work or it didn't work. It didn't it didn't perform for you and it was more about the no-till system. It's not 05:08 about replacing the the knives it just didn't Our farmer practices the biggest thing and years ago. We were dribbling on top of the ground Two by 05:17 Two Two by Two by Two came out. So we kind of picked up on that and we thought man that's gonna work and it the concepts there. I think parts of the country works perfect, but for 05:26 us, it's just a hard thing to make work where we are. So we talk about being no till I mean our guys do know till and 05:32 they make it work, but did you is it that with the no-till system to those knives end up not cutting through 05:38 the debris and you ended up getting more trash or is it a litter issue? I think it's the having to pull the the knives just 05:46 through a no-till soil that had been Disturbed just the friction that that causes and then maybe because it's our silt long. It's what's just been so abrasive. But 05:55 also we were running into issues even throughout the day the holes on the knives were getting stopped up with dirt, you know, just our dirt would flow 06:04 back into it. It was just a tough situation and like I said, we ran them for four years and you know, they're about 70 80 dollars a knife you have two on each 06:13 row is really not about the money, but you would like to run a whole year before we had to work on the planet again. Yeah that that makes a lot of sense and then the person 06:22 that's listening. We don't go around bragging about how many acres we Farm a lot of guys like to do that the coffee shop, but for the person listening that's wondering 06:28 if this system maybe is gonna be a challenge for them. You're putting that across you farm about 5,000 Acres. 06:34 So it's safe to say that 24 Road planner you're doing this only on corn Acres. So 2500 Acres 06:42 Yeah, well, we're running about 4,000 acres of corn right now. Okay, so we form a little more than 5,000. Okay. 06:48 So about 4,000 acres of corn so you couldn't even get through a full planting season until the shoes or I'm sorry, the knives were already worn out. 06:57 That's right. And that's kind of they were like, we're swapping left and right to try that to wear on the opposite side of the knives, but 07:03 you know when you plant for a week and you got to start working on the planter, you know that the disc openers 07:09 is the only thing in my opinion that should be wearing and they can make it all year in our soul. Yeah. Well, obviously your 07:15 time gets pretty valuable unless you get a big rain delay. It's go time. It's go time. And if you got a, you know wrench out 07:21 the shoot, so that makes a lot of sense to me. What about but 07:26 the loss of efficiency I mean if it works or when it works. It put the stuff exactly where he needed and you're mostly putting fertility 07:34 through the two by two right? That's right. That's right. Don't let a fungicide work through the two by two but 90% I was always gonna be fertility. Okay. So 07:43 let's say 90% fertility maybe a fungicide. I don't know. We had a we used to fmc's product and it worked best in the two by two situations. I weigh it 07:52 was what about Now going back to the way you're going to do it. You're not gonna have that stuff exactly where it needs to be and we talk a lot about the Precision putting stuff exactly. What 08:03 needs to be right place right time right product, right? What's the other are I can't remember but 08:09 You're missing out on the on the right place. Yeah, and I know I'm giving up something there, but the the speed we're able 08:18 to plant and not having to work on the Planters. That's what I'm trying to figure out like say we're going to go back to a Drupal system probably which is 08:24 not what you want. You know Fosters what we're all Trying to pretty much knife in our area most parts of the United States. That's what you're trying to do is put your thoughts 08:33 in the root Zone, but at the end of the day, it's just tough. You know, we're putting 12 gallons of 1137. Oh and 08:40 12 gallons of 28% and it's Boron and some other micro nutrients. We're running about 28 gallons two by two is what we were running when we were doing it. And 08:49 you know, we had the tanks on there we could do 40 acre loads 35 acre loads depending on what we want to do so we could go a pretty good long period of time without having to fill up and so 08:58 we had everything worked out. Just making the the system work before we're having a hard time with so yeah, so do you think you'll do 09:07 you think you'll sacrifice yield by not getting the fertility or maybe even the fungicide? Exactly where it needs to be at the right time of planting. Well, 09:17 we're gonna try to use some Biologicals and some Foster solute blousers to try to free up the phosphorus and to help us throughout this year and hopefully 09:26 have come up with a better game plan. We still have an eight row finder that we use for research on our farm that still has two by two 09:32 on it and we're gonna be able to mount some other things on it. We're gonna try to get like a four row four row comparison on that eight row stuff 09:38 like that to try to trying to see what's gonna work best for us. Wait a minute. You can't you haven't eat real planner, which is this sounds sounds 09:46 old school nowadays. Okay, and you use that for experimentation. So like how many acres of it is that like, we're doing a trial or a 09:55 plot or something like that. That's where you're done just on my farm here that planner probably plant 125 to 10:02 158 Acres, but we take that same tractor implanter and we go to two or three different farms in the same plant season doing the same trials to try to get see what 10:11 if it worked best in Alabama or Mississippi or Tennessee because sometimes I get a huge response and somebody in Alabama say, well I didn't get that. So we're trying to 10:20 kind of figure out what products and cause all those response so, That's what we've been doing. I guess the last three years we've 10:27 had that planner set up. It's a fully precision. plant and planner and it has the two by two on at the end first so we can take individual products out or put 10:36 them back in so that's kind of hosted and that's kind of what's leading me down this road to some of the stuff we've seen in the past what we think we've still do without two by 10:45 two are you saying then that based on the the four years of running it on the 24 row Planters? And then now with your experimentation you're thinking 10:54 you're not done with two by two you think you don't have the right. style of a 2x2 system 11:00 I think so, you know a lot of people talk about strip till for us. Our soul is so irritable such a highly irritable Soul 11:06 strip tools really not an option because even when we rip around we have issues with erosion or Hills and stuff or ripping the ground. So I've got to figure 11:15 out how to make something like this work which two by two wasn't causing an erosion issue wasn't causing this. It's just 11:21 the plantability issues what I'm trying to work through and I mean, you know, our planner would have a hundred percent down for trying to 11:27 push two knives to discuss on each row so that plan doing all it can and I know that's causing me some issues with variability in my 11:36 planting too when that Planters just maxed out or down for sure. It's not good enough. Well you also then talked about it was enough drag that you 11:45 actually had to Upsize your tractor. Yeah. Yeah. So the first year we put it all but we were going up an incline we could get down to two three miles 11:56 per hour at best and these tractors and Planters are designed to run 7 8 9 10 miles per hour but for us if we're running all that top system on 12:05 it. It really wasn't working for us. Hey, that's great. We're gonna talk more about the two by two and or the reasons you might have to take it 12:14 off your planner. But before do that, I want to ask you this. Can you afford to waste your fertilizer investment? Well, of course, you can't you're a farmer you're out 12:23 here trying to make the right decisions. You're trying to make sure that you produce a great crop using the right amount of nutrients and no more 12:29 than you actually need. But if you are not utilizing for fertility that you've already applied you're wasting your 12:35 money Innovative biocatalyst products from agerson available, exclusively from nutrient AG Solutions can 12:41 help your cause By making nutrients more available to your crop. They help you get more bang for your fertility Buck. The 12:48 point is you probably have fertility that's being untapped in your fields or maybe even in your crop residue that you 12:54 could be utilizing to produce bigger yields and very little cost to you because why the fertility is already there? 13:00 Contact your local nutrient AG Solutions crop consultant to learn more. All right now. 13:05 back to our man Johnny So the person that's listening to this is gonna say, okay. I don't even I don't even have two by 13:13 two now. I'm wondering whether I should and you're probably gonna say well, you know, you can do like I did get you an eight 13:22 row planter experiment with it and they might say listen I only Farm 13:26 1500 Acres I only have a 12 row planter as it is your answer to them is going to be wide try it and then take it on. What'd you 13:35 say how much the cost was per row? It's probably for the system I have is probably north of just for the knives and stuff probably north of 13:44 a thousand dollars a road new. So it's very expensive but that's what I'm saying every just because you see it on YouTube or see it on Facebook doesn't mean 13:52 it's going to work exactly like that on your farm because you know Chad's been running a strip till rig south of 13:58 me. He's got Sandy soils too but it works for he is but where we are it just doesn't work the same we want it. I would love for strip to work. I believe in 14:07 it. I love for the two by two to work. I just got to find the system that's gonna work best and then I've been talking to Temple 14:13 in different ones and he was talking about he was driven and I was like, we were driven a few years ago and everyone thought you 14:19 needed to go in and he's making it work on his ground. So I'm gonna try to figure out what he's doing see if I can replicate it 14:25 on mine because horsepower what we had issue driven again, there's no worry issue. It'll last 14:31 the life time of the planner. So agronomic question, you're dribbling that fertility on on top of the ground which obviously means horsepower is not 14:40 gonna be a problem. You're not trying to drag these things that get plugged up with the debris and all that. Don't you need 14:46 You need a little moisture to put that dribbled on product where it needs to be. Um, let's all sudden you get a big old two inch 14:55 rain. Do you lose it fertility or is it you think it's still gets it needs to be I think it's still where it needs to be. I mean for the most part usually we get rainfall over 15:04 a day event not two inches and 30 minutes or anything like that. So most time it's gonna be tied up in the residue stuff like that's going to be pushed down here, 15:13 you're nitrogens and stuff like that. You know, they're gonna go on the soil a lot easier than your phosphorus at least penetrate the soil 15:19 easier than the phosphorus. So there's a lot of products you can use but Fosters probably though the one limiting thing as far 15:25 as dribbling that's gonna cause me some issue. She's trying to figure out how to get it in it. I'm not gonna say next year. I don't have a 15:31 new brand of two by two that's actually knife in it in it's just when I was using was not for my soul is not the best fit. So, yeah, so the takeaway here 15:40 is if I've got sand and slope. Um and no till I might not I need to be more Discerning or experiment more 15:50 or just kind of hold off as kind of what I'm hearing. You're not certainly opposed to it. You like the concept the idea and the ideal is there 15:59 it's just that it didn't quite work out and you gave it a fair shake you gave it four years and and it wasn't that it didn't work agronomically. 16:08 That's your word the result. That's right. The placement was there everything I wanted was there just that the ease ability and the headaches 16:18 on the employees trying to plant kind. I had to relieve some of that. So what we did we took that off but the pump and the tanks and the 16:27 rate controllers that are on every road because we had it on every road. We put a spray tip on the back of the planter and now 16:33 we spray our herbicide right behind the planter. So I took that pass out with a sprayer. So I eliminated a pass for the 16:39 sprayer and gonna do that with the planner and then probably some of my fertilized I want to do 16:45 a liquid former fertilize. I'm just gonna band it down the road with my sprayer. So I just rearrange what I'm doing. I left everything on the 16:51 planner. I could it just used it for another, you know another option. Okay, so that's the other thing. So then the the you guy watch you're not doing if you're 17:00 dribbling but also someone's gonna come out some of the stuff's gonna come out in the same mix as your herbicide. That's that's right. So like we put herbicides back 17:10 in the tanks now and we're turning around and spraying right behind the planter. So we eliminated a pass for the sprayer. So 17:16 we actually just change the stuff around my sprayers are actually going to be doing abandon my fertilized down the roads what 17:22 I want to try to do. Okay. So everything that you were putting out when you say dribble, it's actually going to go out in this in a spray form with 17:28 with a herbicide mix. So it's going it's broadcast. Well, so this is separate the herbicide has been broadcast behind the 17:37 planter just like a normal sprayer would but now that not Sprayers are not having to do the herbicide. I've got dribble bars 17:44 on that are actually going to dribble the fertilized kind of just like it would on a climber. I don't rolls and 17:50 it basically just gave me some more time. You know, we do a one pass deal on our corn herbicides. So right at the planting 17:56 we spray right behind the planter. So we're able to do that with the planner now stuff carriers. We just so for operational 18:02 and you're in what you're saying. There's you also are using Johnny the all the same product. I mean, you're still you're using 18:08 you're still getting so you didn't you didn't have to take something away. You just took out how it went in the ground. 18:13 That's right. That's right. And then when you you dip your toe back into using the two by two system moving forward, what's it you're 18:22 you're going to well, maybe we'll find a company to work with they'll let you experiment in their whole pitch would be it won't wear out in sandy soil and it won't 18:32 get plugged up. I mean, that's the two things you're looking for, right? That's right. That's right. Just gonna have a visibility and have operator. 18:39 Or The Operators on the tractors are not having to work on the planners all the time and adjust on them and you know keep everything tweaked. It was just like 18:48 we're fill up around. Do yeah, you still love and relax you're having to work on your planner while you were feeling up for five minutes. So we just kind of changed up. We're just gonna go a different 18:58 way this year. Like I said, I still got the two by two on the plot liner if I see something in there that really just shines and makes 19:04 me feel good. I may try that with dribble if I get the same results and then we're still good to go. Yeah, and it 19:10 sounds like this is gonna work in your girl. You're gonna be you'll be planting faster and you don't need a horse power up and 19:16 go and trade out tractors to get bigger tractors. There's a lot of wins and then I'll ask you again. Do you you're anticipation? 19:23 Do you think this changes yield? I mean we know the weather and everything else plays into it. You're convinced that you're not gonna lose you. 19:31 I think where I'm going to do it my yields probably will not be hurt at all. I do believe that deep Banning 19:37 fertilizing all that works and that's what you need to do. But for where we are where we're located, that's a very hard thing to do. 19:43 Either World liberate right there. His name is Johnny Burrell is an affiliate with extreme Aggies and West Central Tennessee. I haven't gotten 19:49 there yet, but I'm gonna get there possibly this summer and and do some taping of stuff that's going on there. If you'll 19:55 have me but you don't know anyway talking about a system that I think it's important because a lot of times we're telling our listeners and our members. Hey, 20:04 here's this new thing. You got to try. Here's a new thing you got to do because we tried it and now we're talking about here's something that was well executed over thousands of 20:13 acres for four years, and I'm telling you maybe it's time to pull back on us. There's probably some folks right now that are in your in your same camp. I 20:22 would imagine That's it. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Keep me posted. Keep me posted on anything else because you're 20:29 kind of now the you're the the test. You know what I mean? You're the you're the control you're everybody else is doing this and then you're going the other direction. So you're somewhere between the contrarian and 20:38 probably go back. I just gotta find the system. I jumped into this one system all three planners without testing and that's probably where I wish I'd have 20:47 done a little bit more test. yeah, that's that's even if I want to put 20:52 the tanks on the planner and the pumps and planned it. Do four rows with the knives with nothing and just see how long they last before I outfitted all 21:01 of that. I wish I'd have done that a little bit different and I mean I I haven't found a brand that I really like better either. So 21:07 that's the problem. Like the one I had probably wouldn't go back with I haven't found the ones last one. I want to 21:13 do next. That's what I'm waiting on just to find something that's gonna work. And like I said talking to some of the guys extreme AG they're 21:19 back to dribbling on top, you know, they might not be putting their Fosters struggling. They might be I don't know but I'm just saying like they're back to dribbling some of our and getting great. I 21:28 mean, I think everyone say temples doing a pretty good job of soybeans. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's cool. 21:35 So and this is only an issue on corn the two but she's only an issue and corn, you know, two by two on soybeans. Anyway, all this soybeans also in we're putting potash now 21:44 Nature's father and last year and and I had really no issue the potash works great, right? Yeah. Now she 21:53 come in to fill up. It was just so you I can't ask my employees to work hard all day on the same thing over and over that it's 22:02 kind of where I And I drive a planter myself. So I know the feeling I just I can't fuss about it. You know the story 22:10 you got big sometimes. So by the way, so on the planner of the soybean it was the same issue. I mean, it's it's it's the 22:18 same issue. You still had some plugging you still had to downforce issue. You still had the wearing out of the knives. So it's 22:24 all the same thing. It didn't matter from crop to crop. And yeah, look at the longitude of the planner if I could be planting without it and running a 150 200 pounds 22:33 of now Force our planet with the knives and I'm running six fifty basically all the way across the planner to get it in the ground. You can't tell me that's good on the actual planner itself, 22:42 either so There are more good on the diesel feel the death. Yeah, right. You're burning a lot more resources not 22:52 to mention possibly compaction when you're pushing that right. Yeah, you're trying that's right. Yeah. 22:58 All right, we're gonna stay tuned and what we're gonna do is we're revisit this subject come Harvest time. When a combine runs and of 23:04 all the things we're gonna be looking for all the different products and what you know your observations where we're gonna say, do you 23:10 think there's any difference from going from four years of using the two by two to if you're without it, so we're gonna revisit this come October when you're September when 23:19 you're done with all this, is that work, It sounds good. All right, his name is Johnny Burrell. Fill it for extreme egg. My name is Dan Mason. Thank you for being here. This is Extreme 23:27 Ice cutting the Curve. That's a wrap for this episode of extreme. AG's cutting the Curve. 23:33 But there is plenty more available by visiting extremeag.farm for over 50 years Farmers have 23:39 turned to The Proven lineup of crop inputs offered by Loveland products from seed treatments Plant Nutrition at event and crop protection products Loveland has 23:48 the complete lineup to keep your farming operation productive and most importantly profitable check out 23:54 Loveland products.com to learn more.