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Iowa | I've tried some versions of this. I have a 12/24 planter, I added the 24th row for the little bit of no till I do and offset the planter hitch 7.5in and it works really well for spacing in tilled ground as well. I have a 30ft planter and 60ft sprayer. First year I planted a couple of fields manually turning off rows every other pass, it works but is annoying, so I did the rest of the fields leaving the rows off so I had an extra set of tram lines. It is great spraying with the wider rows, I do have GPS, but when you turn around having the obvious path to go made spraying a little nicer. I did notice in the spots where I had more weed pressure there were more escapees in the wider rows than the narrow.
The next year, since I use a white planter and there are two soybean plates available a 60cell and a double row 60 cell I put the single cell plates in the majority of the planter and a double cell plate on the rows next to the controlled traffic rows. So the rows by the 30in wide had double the population of the 15in rows. Honestly I didn't see much difference in how the crop performed or canopy for the wider rows.
Last year I just left all the rows on at 15in. I spray with a pull sprayer, I left the tractor at 60in spacing and the sprayer at 120in spacing I found a path where I could drive down the rows with minimal damage even with 480 rear tires on the tractor. a week after my last sprayer pass and you couldn't tell where I drove through. I even did 2 post passes last year because I opted to spray the clethodem later itself instead of a higher rate with the enlist.
In conclusion in my experience it makes spraying nice to have the controlled traffic rows, but there is no other gain. I'd rather have the nice even canopy and run over the occasional plant. | |
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15" Soybeans with Tramlines for Sprayer Tracks
