Home-Built "Coulter Cart"

Home-Built "Coulter Cart" PLANTERS Planters 26-2-26 When Robert Davis goes to the field this spring, he'll be using a one-pass planting system that extends a total of 80 ft. behind his tractor. He applies fertilizer, plants nine 20-in. rows, and packs the soil - all in one pass. "I built most of the equipment myself so it's a low-cost system that I can use to plant all my corn and beans," says Davis. The system consists of a homemade coulter cart equipped with Rawson zone till coulters; a 3-pt. Deere 7340 planter hooked up to the cart; and a 20-ft. wide packer made from 20-in. dia., 1/4-in. thick well casing. The coulter cart supports a pair of tanks - a stainless steel tank holding 600 gal. of liquid nitrogen, and a poly tank that holds 200 gal. of liquid fertilizer. To make the cart, Davis bought a used Deere 7000 pull-type, fold-up planter equipped with lift assist wheels. He removed the center 6-row section of the 12-row toolbar and then welded the outside sections back together, adding steel box beam for reinforcement. He used box tubing off an old Deere plow to make the cart's axle and added dual truck tires. He mounted used Rawson zone till coulters onto the cart, two per row. An electric squeeze pump is used to deliver liquid nitrogen and a ground-driven pump distributes the liquid fertilizer. He already had the Deere 7340 planter, which is equipped with nine 20-in. row units and two 34-in. skip rows. He used part of an old truck frame to lengthen the lower lift hitch points on front of the planter. These "extension arms" allow the planter to flex from side to side on rolling ground, independent of the coulter cart. The planter's lift assist wheels raise both the cart and planter at the same time. He built a gooseneck hitch onto the packer and added a drawbar hookup for it on back of the planter. "It does a nice job and works well on our rolling ground," says Davis. "The packer is heavy enough to just seal the top inch or two of soil. It really did a nice job sealing the ground up last spring when we had very dry planting conditions. The packer's hitch rotates on a drawbar pin, so I can still turn as short as I could with a conventional planter. "A comparable Unverferth coulter cart sells for about $31,000, and that doesn't include the planter or packer. I spent just $3,500. What's more, I like my coulter cart better because the coulters are only 3 ft. ahead of the row units, not 10 ft. As a result, row units always stay in the tilled zones even when planting around corners and on sidehills. The original no-till coulters are still on the planter so there are a total of three coulters per row unit. Because the two sets of coulters are separate, there's plenty of room for rocks to flow through." According to Davis, the entire rig weighs about 26,000 lbs. when the tanks are full so it takes a lot of power. He uses his Deere 8430 articulated tractor to pull it. "Even the 8430 tractor has trouble pulling this system in wet ground," notes Davis. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Robert Davis, 2030 Bixby-Wood Road, Savannah, N.Y. 13146 (ph 315 365-2266).

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