Preparing your Land and John Deere Equipment for Spring

The sun’s back! Time to hit the fields and get ready for planting season and beyond. This will require some time on your property, but it’ll also mean you’ll need to spend some time preparing your John Deere equipment for work. To help you out, Prairieland Partners has provided some tips for preparing for spring work. If you have more questions or if you run into bigger issues, stop by our location near McPherson, Kansas so our friendly staff can assist you. You can also check out some of the John Deere equipment for sale at our dealership.

Test and Prep Soil

All your crops start with the soil. If your soil is bad, then there’s no hope for your yield. The first step is to figure out the state of your soil by testing it. Weather patterns and other environmental factors can influence the composition of your soil’s nutrients, which can ultimately change what’s going to grow best this season. Places like Hutchinson and our own Concordia can see prolonged freezing temperatures that can severely alter the soil. Collect samples of your soil throughout various areas of your property and in different parts of each field (don’t forget to take notes on where each sample is from). You’ll probably be running a pH test, which you can do yourself with a specialized kit or you can send off to a lab to do for you. The results can give you a better understanding of how to approach the coming planting and growing seasons.

In other words, the results are going to affect how you prep your soil. You might also have your own system that you fall back on, or one that a fellow farmer swears by. Some common priorities would be to use a cultivator to break up the compact or frozen ground, weeding, and then mowing. Whatever your process is, you’ll probably need some John Deere equipment to back you up.

Inspect and Test your John Deere Equipment

Now it’s time to turn to your John Deere equipment. Ensuring that its ready for spring work could mean the difference between a smooth process and one that hits one roadblock after the other. We also highly recommend keeping up regular maintenance checks throughout the growing season, especially going into harvesting season. Start by inspecting and cleaning your equipment. Even if you stored it in an enclosed space, it’s probably got a nice film of dust on it, so cleaning it off and checking for problem areas should be your first step.

Make sure you’re testing all the moving parts and lubricating them as needed. Check batteries, brakes, tires, lights, mirrors, hitches, hydraulics, and anything else that’s pertinent to your John Deere equipment and your work. You should even consider running the machine for a bit to make sure it’s performing the way it did when you put it in storage. Address any damage, missing parts, or other problem areas before getting started in your fields.

Choose Crops

At this point, you’re getting pretty close to planting, but there’s still one step you’ll need to tackle first and that’s choosing the right crops. This will be partially informed by those test results from on your soil and the answer can be very specific. What you grow on a farm in Kingman might be different from what someone else grows on their farm in Abilene, which may different from what someone grows in Wamego. In other words, use your farming community to gain tips, but always consider the specifics of your plot of land.

There are other land considerations that might influence your final decision, as well as demand in the market and how much it’ll cost to plant certain seeds. If this is all going over your head, then you might want to hit the books before getting too far in your prepping process. Understanding your fields plays an important role in making the most of your harvest.

At this point, you’re getting closer to planting your seeds, but there’s still a lot to do. For more information, or to check out our John Deere equipment for sale, stop by Prairieland Partners and let our friendly staff help you with all your agriculture equipment needs. We’re in Abilene, Andale, Anthony, Clay Center, Concordia, Emporia, Hutchinson, McPherson, Kingman, Marion, Wamego, Wichita, and Winfield, Kansas.