9 apps to prep you for planting season

Planting season is creeping up, slowly but surely. Technology advancements makes planting incredibly different than it was 5 or 10 years ago: farmers drive tractors hands-free, check irrigation pivots from home, and post pictures to social media straight from the field.

Here are 9 apps to get you prepared before and help during planting season:

Corn Planting Calculator

Use this app to provide real-time calculations for planting corn from specific inputs resulting in the correct spacing of the corn being planted. Inputs such as population desired, cost per acre, seed counts and spacing in inches or metric format are achieved. This app is available in the iTunes Apps Store.

JD Link

This equipment management app from John Deere is a "telematics system designed to remotely connect owners and managers to their equipment, providing alerts and machine information including location, utilization, performance and maintenance data to manage where and how equipment is being used." Find it for you Apple or Android product.

Apps for local and nationwide radar

Farmers for the Future member, Dave Kreer of Hickory, Pennsylvania, uses numerous weather and radar apps during planting season, especially after the wet, cold spring last year. "WKYC Radar displays all U.S. radars - useful if weather is still beyond your nearest radar range," recommends Kraeer. This app is available free for Apple and Android devices.

Tank Mix Calculator

"Tank Mix Calculator is a good one that gives you a breakdown on your sprayer tank mixes." – Ben Jones, Royal, IA

This TapLogic agriculture app is provided free for Apple or Android users to quickly and easily generate a tank mix. Just enter your acreage, tank size, and carrier volume. Next, select your chemicals from our list or add your own. Tank Mix Calculator will then provide you with the number of loads required to spray your acreage, along with full and partial load mixes of the chemicals you selected.

TankMix by DuPont

The DuPont TankMix Calculator is similar to the Tank Mix Calculator, and some of our Agriculture.com users like having both! This one allows you to "easily calculate the amount of product you will need to treat a specific field area, the amount of product you need to apply to a specific tank size, the amount of water you'll need to treat a specific field area or the amount of product you need to get the desired Volume to Volume ratio.   It offers a wide selection of Units of Measure to make it useful anywhere in the world and it gives you the flexibility to enter information using both decimal or fractions." Grab it for your Apple device.

Snapseed

Take photos from the field, and make 'em pop! I love Snapseed -- a free and easy-to-use app, helping you enhance, transform, and share photos with ease using advanced features from the leader in digital photography software. Catch it for your Apple or Android phone/tablet, and share those pictures on Farmers for the Future or Twitter including @Agriculturecom in your tweet!

ImPlant-Field

When we asked Farmers for the Future members what apps they use, captainsirwalter from Canada posted, "I use ImPlant-Field for field records."

Available for $6.99 from iTunes, this app allows you and your farm workers to enter planting data that can be emailed to your computer to be filed in a folder. On the flip side, you can enter what you want planted in specific field and email it to your workers.

Ag PhD Fertilizer Removal by Crop

The Ag PhD Fertilizer Removal by Crop application is a great reference for you as you plan fertilizer applications on your farm. Simply select your crop and the desired yield for that crop, and you will be given the amount of vital crop nutrients that your desired yield will need. Results can be saved within the app and e-mailed to yourself or your agronomist for later reference. Find it here.

Land Lease Calculator

Have questions about rental rates for land? The University of Nebraska-Lincoln developed this app to assist producers in collecting information that will help determine what might be charged for agricultural land leases.   While the final decision of what will be charged is entirely up to the parties involved, this app will help to frame the discussion and provide insight into possibilities. Get it for $1.99 for Apple and Android phones.

For more information on these apps and over 80 more, check out our App Tray.

Have an app that you use that you think would be beneficial to other farmers? Leave a comment below!