He Plants Small Grains, Cover Crops With A Corn Planter

He Plants Small Grains Cover Crops With A Corn Planter PLANTERS Larry Hak is an Ohio crop farmer who’s always looking for a way to maximize machinery use on his farm “A few years ago it really bugged me that I needed an expensive piece of machinery to plant small grains and another one to plant corn and soybeans ” Hak says “One day I came up with a design for solid seed plates so I could plant wheat and other small grains with my corn planter ” He calls them Seed Right plates Hak first tested the plates on his 12-row Kinze interplant planter and was pleased with the results “I was able to plant wheat in 15-in rows and have it meter out at about 3/4 the rate that I was planting with a Great Plains drill ” Hak says He set the planting depth at about 1 in and the seed germinated and emerged real well “People told me I was really going to lose yield with 15-in rows of wheat ” Hak says “but that wasn’t the case at all In the years I’ve used the plates the yield has been about 3 bu less an acre than with drilled seed ” Hak figures he more than makes up for that 3-bu yield disadvantage with the money he saved by selling his 30-ft grain drill that had planted less than 500 acres “On my farm it’ll take me 20 years to make up that difference at 3 bu an acre ” he says “In the meantime I’m making better use of my planter ” He also uses the plates to plant oats canola and rye with his corn planter Hak says his aluminum plates work on any Kinze planter with brush-type seed meters The solid aluminum plates fit on the inside of bean sorghum and cotton plates covering the seed channels except for a small space on the outside edge A thin foam rubber gasket on that edge keeps the small seeds in the box from leaking out when the seed metering plates aren’t turning Bolts that hold the seed meters hold the Seed Right plates in place Hak figured out a formula for planting various crops with his Seed Right plates by planting different size seeds in his fields over a carefully measured distance “I weighed the seed before planting and weighed the amount left after I planted one acre ” Hak says “I knew the number of seeds per pound and came up with a formula that matches what Kinze has in its planter manuals ” Hak’s formulas are also posted on his website and are easily accessible by smartphone “Anyone can figure out the correct amount to plant if they know the approximate number of seeds per pound and can change transmission sprockets on their planter ” Hak says Another great application for Seed Right plates is planting cover crops Hak says “we’ve come up with a way to accurately plant one type of cover crop seed in the front boxes and different seeds in the rear boxes ” Hak says he plants test plots on his own farm to make sure his planting formulas are accurate “I started with wheat and moved to oats canola rye and a few years ago into cover crops like tillage radishes and cow peas ” he says He has customers across the country using his plates with planters from 6 rows up to 48 rows His plates are even going to South Africa Australia and South America “This invention has grown beyond my expectations ” Hak says “so I guess it’s something that people were looking for ” He sells the plates direct to farmers and also through Kinze dealers In 2014 he’ll be working on plates for use with air vac planters and hopes to have those available for the 2015 planting season Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Larry Hak Seed-Right 23453 Werner Rd Convoy Ohio 45832 ph 419 749-4021; Larry@seed-right com; www seed-right com

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