Do Everything Machine Plants Corn, Soybeans And Small Grains

Do Everything Machine Plants Corn, Soybeans And Small Grains PLANTERS Planters 15-2-1 An IH Cyclo air planter mounted on a new Deere 750 grain drill lets Iowa farmer Paul Beckman plant corn, soybeans, wheat, grass seed and any other crop with one machine. "I've been looking for ways to cut costs and simplify my operation. What could be simpler than having just one planter for all your crops?" says Beckman, who farms near Sperry, Iowa. He also does custom planting with the innovative new rig which be designed and then had built by two friends in the machinery business. In recent years Beckman has been gradually conveiling to reduced tillage but he wasn't happy with the performance of his IH 400 Cyclo planter on no-till ground. So he bought a new Deere 750 drill. "It does a great job in nearly all conditions. There's a tremendous amount of down pressure on each row unit. I was really pleased with the job it did in beans and small grains and wanted the same performance in corn. The problem is, the drill can't handle corn." That's when Beckman got the idea of building a hybrid planter. The matchup worked perfectly. "I can switch from beans to corn in 15 minutes, and do just as good a job planting either crop," he says. He plants beans and small grains in 7 1/2 in. spaced rows and six rows of corn with 30-in. spacing. What's more, when planting corn he injects starter fertilizer on both sides of each row using the row units on either side of the row of corn. Fertilizer is carried in the drill's seed hopper. "Everything's simple and uncomplicated. Easy to operate, easy to switch from one crop to another, and I eliminated an expensive second planter for corn." Beckman turned the Cyclo seed hopper and blower around backwards - so the blower faces the tractor - and mounted it on the frame of the 750 drill. The air planter's blower is powered hydraulically by a ptodriven hydraulic pump. Seed tubes run from the Cyclo hopper to the 6 row units used for corn. When he wants to plant corn, he simply unhooks the drop tubes from the drill's grain box and connects up the Cyclo tubes. He also mounted the markers from the Cyclo planter onto the Deere drill and rigged them up to raise and lower automatically. Beckman plants under conditions varying from straight conventional tillage to total no-till, sometimes even planting directly into sod. He says the new Deere drill can handle anything. "It's got about 450 lbs. of down pressure per row and provides greatseed-to-ground contact because it slices down through any residue. Does an especially outstanding job planting beans into corn stalks. There's no need for any tillage at all," says Beckman. About the only "tillage" he does on his no-till ground is to pull a Fuerst harrow behind his hybrid planter, carried by brackets he designed himself. "Once I saw this drill work, I knew it could plant anything but I needed a delivery system for corn since the fluted rollers on the drill couldn't handle it. A Deere engineer told me I couldn't do it but Deere doesn't have any interest in a planter like this. They want to sell as much equipment as they can because they have a tremendous investment in the manufacture of both planters and drills," says Beckman. Seed depth with the drill is just as accurate as with a Max-Emerge planter, according to Beckman, but seed spacing is slightly off. "It's not enough to worry about. I consulted with an agonomist who told me that the slight variation in spacing would cost me less than 2 bu. per acre." He varies plant population from 12,000 to 38,000 plants per acre. He uses the same drive sprockets on the drill for both corn and beans. Both drill and planter seed tubes are fully monitored by a Dickey john monitor. He travels 8 to 9 mph planting beans and 6 mph when planting corn, pulling the planter with a 120-hp. tractor. One of the things Beckman likes best about his hybrid planter is being able to inject fertilizer on either side of corn rows using existing row units. There's no need for complicated add-on equipment. All he had to do was paint the inside of the hop

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