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| twinsfan, We have used the SBs 3 yrs on a 1790. At the time we purchased the planter (2004 crop)the only insecticide application options that I knew of were the SBs,liquid, or going to either a traited seed or one that has something like Poncho 1250 applied. I did not know Gandy offered the system that Ron speaks about until I just read his post. As I stated before, we are in an area of extreme variant western rootworm pressure & liquids, Fortress. nor poncho 1250 (or a similiar product) seems to do much good & rw resistant corn has been on both sides of the fence. RWR corn suffered from rw damage in 2004 in several fields in this area. In 2005 it didn't show any symptons of rw damage. From what I have seen Aztec or Force are the two weapons of choice when it comes to insecticides, at least in this area. In areas with less pressure than here they may seem hold their own.
As for product cost in SBs vs reg. granulars, our experience that at least Aztec costs the same per ac. It may appear to cost more than the regular granulars but the usage rate is lower evening out the cost. At least that is the situation where we buy our chemicals. The first year we had our system only Aztec & Fortress were available in SBs though toward the end of the season there was some available with Force but hearsay was they were handfilled and the cost was higher than the bagged Force. For 2006 Aztec & Force were both available in SBs. I don't know if anything else was or not as those were the only two we priced & ended up going with the Aztec. Main reason we went with the Aztec is that it offeres 2 modes of resistance whereas Force only offers 1, & that mode is one of the two in Aztec.
To mount the SBs on a 1790 planter you have to buy mounting brackets from Red Ball. There were 2 types available. The type we bought all mount to the planter frame thus not having any weight on the row unit. The other style mounts to the row units on the wings but you still have to use the frame mounts on the center section. Obviously with the row mounts the weight on the row unit will change as the bos empties. How much if any this had on planting depth I donot know but we went with the frame mounts just because of that. I will add that the frame mounts are a more of a PITA to put the full SBs on as they do sit higher. Whether JD factory units will sit on Red Balls mounts I do not know but by Ron's statement it appears that they will. I do know that the Kinzie insectide mounting frame will accept the SBs as well as we recently traded for a new Kinzie 3600 & ordered only the insecticide mounting frames from Kinzie & put our SBs on them.
Concerning safety. Ron is correct in saying that there is exposure to both. However, the amount of exposure with the SBs is greatly reduced IMO. Biggest difference that I see is that you don't have the dust when placing the boxes on the meters that you have when pouring granulars from a bag into an open insecticide box. I would equate the amount of exposure with the SBs as to being similiar to that with the lock&loads. I remember when the L&L first came out one of the gimics was using a blacklight to show the amount of exposure with the L&L vs dumping from a bag. This may have been at a pesticide training session I attended put on by Purdue U
Concerning the 25 bu "refuge "box. If I would recomend it if you are going to have to plant a refuge. Had a friend with a 1790 who planted all rw resistant corn except for his refuge. Biggest complaint he had was cleaning down the planter & boxes to switch to his refuge corn. His planter is a 2006 but came out before they offered the refuge box. He is hoping he can add the refuge box to his planter, if not he will trade for a planter that has one on it.
As for the ccs system vs the 3bu boxes. All depends on how much you farm & how much of 1 or 2 varities you plant. If you can fill one or both boxes with one varitie it's a nice system. Our problem was we planted too many different varities so never did fill one box completely with just one corn #. In beans where we were filling both boxes it was nice having the capacity.
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