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Central South Dakota | We used to pull a 1910 behind the planter. Worked alright most of the time, but usually 90% of my problems out in the field were due to a fertilizer issue. Also every year in at least one field, we would have a plug or skip issue to go back and fix later on. As soft as the ground was these last two springs, we dropped the cart because it was nothing but a boat anchor and had the co-op spread it. I can't tell any difference in the corn, but we got timely rains after it was spread to take it down.
Some guys drill the fertilizer on for next years corn in the fall, but just like these last two years, if plans change or a field has a lot of pp spots, the fertilizer investment is in the ground with no return or if the water is standing on it, it is leached away.
Now another neighbor decided he was going to drill the Fert on in the spring, but then we had a dry spell that year and you could see where the drill had broke open and dried the ground some then the corn got dinged versus ours beside him that wasn't drilled.
I don't know that there is a perfect way to get the nutrients on. If there was, we would all be doing it.
JMHO, but if we went back to pulling some type of cart, the way I'm potentially leaning is to look at PP's conceal system and maybe look at putting 20-30 gal of 28% in the ground and have the balance dry spread. The trade off is you get some Fert in the ground, but you can cover more acres between fills. When we put it all down with the planter if I had to tend my own fertilizer 200 acres was a big day and any more and you better have 2 semi's hauling dry product to you and a guy tending you full-time because we were handling MESZ, urea, and AMS. With nothing behind the planter, 400-450 is a decent day because I'm not headed to the truck every 45-50 acres to fill. With the conceal and a proper sized tank, I would be looking at fills every 100 acres roughly in my mind. We push around 400 acres a row through the planter, so time is of the essence.
Not sure if I helped you or confused you more, just throwing different ideas and things I've seen out there for you to mull over.
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Anyone put dry fert. down with drill?
