Jason,

I agree with the others, this is the way to learn how to do it. As far as advice, please realize that I and others on this board are from the other side of the world as far as no tilling corn compared to Sunnyvale, Washington. You hve taken what you read here, combined it with what appears to be common sense and you look to be on the verge of success.

There are different personal preferences in how to run a row cleaner. In wheat stubble, due to the nature of the wheat roots, you do have to run the row cleaner fairly agressively to eliminate hairpinning. I think you were correct in NOT running a coulter. On the Curvetine closing wheel question, I am not sure you need them in you soils and drier conditions. It looks like there is an irrigation rig in the background of one of your photos.

What I would suggest is to buy three Curvetines next time you plant. Run one Curvetine + one rubber on one end row and two Curvetines on the other end row and see if you see a difference in emergence. Really depends on your soils and moisture level at planting.

One key point that concerns me about your down pressure settings: while you saw no difference in the performance, even with empty seed boxes and no added row unit weight, that tells me your soils are VERY different than in most of the corn belt. You want just enough down pressure on the gage wheels to keep them firmly (but not excessively so) on the ground and depth stops even in hard spots in the field. I assume you have the equalizer beams in your 7300 row unit depth wheels? Trashwheels minimize the need for them by giving you a level surface for both gage wheels but they are sometimes still of benefit.

Running a lighter weight 7300 8 row planter in the 3rd JD HD DP spring notch is very likely to cause skips in your rows to due slippage of your metering drive wheels due to lack of weight.  In the 3rd or 4th notch instead of presssing down on the row units you start lifting up on the toolbar, possibly causing slip on the wheel which drive the meters unless you have hydraulic drive. This slip does NOT show up on the monitor because the shaft sensor also responds to the slip....

In midwestern wheat stubble with that planter you would likely be running 3rd or 4th notch and having to add suitcase or other weight to your 7300 toolbar. You are obviously in a  different soil environment completely. I don't know if oyu are in the Palouse area or not but those may be volcanic soils which evidently work very well. I agree with the idea of getting material out of the way to eliminate hairpinning in wheat stubble. Just be careful not to run any bare strips up and down hills in case you DO get a heavy rain before the plants are up and growing.

About temperature - maybe you need to try to get the corn in the ground earlier with a short season corn to avoid the heat during pollination.

Thank you for your business and sharing your trial. Please let us know how things work out. If you see some skips in the rows I suggest that maybe where your meter drive was slipping due to excessive row unit spring pressure.

I hope your plans are to get the stubble sprayed ASAP, get any additional needed fertilizer down and follow through with the rest of your demonstration to corn harvest.

Regards,

Jim at Dawn

 PS - is your last picture showing some crusting of the soil?? If so the Curvetines leaving a dimpled pattern would help eliminate an emergence problems due to crusting. This is a common reason for using them in cotton in the south. The run two CT per row. You will need to change the tailpiece on the 7300 to bolt on style (rather than the welded in stud) to use our latest Timken bearing Curvetine XR's.