Planting Corn

     It's corn planting time here in Owyhee County. It has been for a while actually. The time frame varies based on the type of corn you plant, what the weather allows, and when the farmer schedules it.

     This is a corn planter. You might have noticed, it's a complex piece of machinery. On the left of the picture you can see that it hooks onto the three-point hitch of the tractor and also into the hydraulic system. The upper bins contain pellets of insecticide to make sure nothing eats the seeds after they're put in the ground. The lower bins contain the corn. The red part you can see in the middle of the planter is a fan (powered by the hydraulics of the tractor) that sucks air through the gray hoses.

     This is a planter unit. This planter has six. The air hose goes into a mechanism that picks up one seed at a time like you might pick up a ping-pong ball with your vacuum. Though it's somewhat hard to see, there's a drive chain in there. (It might be easier to see if you click the picture to get a larger version.) The drive chain controls the rate at which the seeds are dropped. On the bottom you can see a metal plate that brushes aside any clods or debris. Following that are wheels that have a set of disks inside them that are angled to spread apart the soil, leaving a channel that the seeds fall into. In the very back are plastic disks that angle the opposite direction, pushing the soil back in over the seed. A chain drags behind to smooth out any ridges that are left.

     Here it is again from the back. From here you can see a ridged tire. This tire gauges how fast you're going. It's connected to the drive chain, and through it, controls how fast the seeds will drop. You can also see where the chemical that protects the seed feeds into the planter units.

     Plant spacing and row spacing are how far apart the seeds and later the plants are in the field. The row spacing for this corn (you might remember) is 30 inches. This is important to maintain because that's the spacing every piece of equipment that runs through this field will be set at. The plant spacing is about five and a half inches. How far apart the seeds are planted will affect how much food or product grows within an area and is based on how big the plant needs to be to produce most effectively. These corn kernels have been dug back up to make sure there falling at the correct spacing. You may have noticed that they've got a green coating on them. This is a cocktail of chemicals to keep the fungus and bugs from eating the corn before it can sprout.

     Now, if you're like me, you'd be wondering what kind of corn this is. It's field corn! This field won't be for eating, not by people anyhow. That's a post for a different day, though. Step by step, day by day, the crops are getting closer to coming to the public at large. (That means you.)