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| Have always used the Cyclo type planter for no-till. Now have a CIH 1200 I run about 6 mph, but the manual shows up to 8 mph until you get to really high populations. At higher speeds, putting the down pressure at the higher setting is recommended to take out some of the potential bounce.
Thought when I went from the 900 to the 1200, the increased accuracy, mostly from less doubles would help justify going to the 1200. Can't say that's happened. The 900 is a very good planter imo, even though my experience was if your target pop was 35,000, you would set it at 32,500 because the doubles would take it to 35 no matter how exact you tried to set the *!#& brush for a particular seed.
Some might find this surprising. Used to lease a 12 row 800 from a neighbor that 3 different farmers used, so it was out there running hard when conditions were right. Had 2 seed boxes, each running 6 rows, and one really started leaking air as it needed caulking and more rivets, but we were in a hurry, so kept planting. To get 2 or 3 oz. of air on the leaky side, we had to run the non-leaky side up to about 12 oz. Put the same number of bags on each side, and watched to make sure we weren't excessively losing seeds before the cutoff on the weak side.
Every time the planter was getting low with seed, the drums would visually from the tractor go down equally. Even after a few hundred acres, every time the drums would go down equally, no difference, so we kept planting. Couple hundred bags later, exactly the same on each side. Finally rained, put in rivets, but never forgot the exact air pressure probably nothing to lose sleep over.
My take away from this subject is to show my wife I REALLY could use and justify a tractor that can pull the planter at 12 mph next spring, and no, I don't mean just going down the road, usually too much traffic there anyway. She'll prob remind me I'm a STO. Don't know if I really want to know what that stands for. | |
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Planter speed vs yield observation
