As you can imagine the team at PSSAG get around a lot of planters each season and its great to cast your eyes over the ingenuity some farmers come up with regarding add ons to their planters to get the job done. A lot of the planters we work on have some form of liquid application capability at planting. Most setups are farm made with either a hypro/electric pump, bypass valve and filter. Rate control is often for a set speed and uniformity amongst rows is monitored by looking over your shoulder at the red ball gauge. Machine vibration & liquid viscosity can all have an effect on the accuracy of the red ball gauge and seemingly level red balls often still have a row by row variation of 15-30%.
Anyone running a Precision Planting Seedsense or Gen 3 monitor has the ability to monitor each row of liquid with the installation of a “Flow Sense” module which is a meter that simply connects into your existing SRM based hardware. Retailing for under $350.00 the flow sense meter has push/pull fittings allowing it to be fitted within minutes to any one particular row unit. The monitor then displays the readout as in the picture below. You have the option to fit one module to each row which will immediately recognise any liquid discrepancies in rate across individual rows of the planter. Alternatively you could run one module and move it between rows to potentially troubleshoot any plumbing issues that may be causing rate fluctuation.
Flowsense gives the grower the ability to see application rate issues or blockages in the moment to ensure every seed gets the correct amount of treatment thus enhancing crop uniformity and yields.
What better piece of mind knowing that your trusty liquid setup that has served you well for the last decade can be monitored very easily, or perhaps you may not want to find out a problem that is 10 years old.
