Anytime you have fertilizer around metal, rust is going to be an issue. The way I see it, the planter we just bought should be around for as long as I care to farm.

Counting the time it took to stop and fill up the boxes, we were easily tying up five to six hours a day in labor. At $15/hour, you're talking $75-90/day. It's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. But why pay it if you don't have to?

In our case, we like a longer season variety. The index showed that with a starter, we'd likely get a yield boost in just one year out of eight. We figured we'd have a better chance of getting higher yields by focusing on getting our entire crop planted earlier.