Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | Yes, I tend to agree that PP's introduction of the eSets did force some scrambling on Deere's part. In my case we planted commercial sweet corn for many years and it is much more difficult to work with than nice round field corn. When the first Vac planters came out by Dad believed that they would be better for sweet corn than the older finger pickup units that we had been using. So for this reason and others he bought one of the first Vac planters in the area.
The original boxes would not allow the rough sweet corn seed to flow into the seed chamber. That year was a combination of factors resulting in many problems planting the sweet corn. First of all the sweet corn was a special super sweet variety which meant it was lighter and more wrinkled than ever, second the ground conditions were extremely dry which left our fields very smooth (too smooth) and lastly the seed box design. Dad had all kinds of problems with the monitor and assumed that the seed sensors were dirty. He would go back and remove a box and run the brush down the tube. This worked not because the tube was dirty but because the seed had bridged in the seed box and he broke the bridge when he moved the box.
The next field was better because NH3 had been applied crosswise. Since the ground was so dry, the field was not reworked. These crosswise trailer tracks were actually a blessing because they caused the seed boxes to bounce keeping the bridging to a minimum.
Next year Deere came out with the sweet corn attachment. This required the new style boxes with large openings. I bought the kits and new boxes. This worked much better for sweet corn. Later I started using the sweet corn attachment for all corn. The down side was that certain populations were not available since a new population chart was needed due to having 40 cells/revolution rather than 30. There were fairly large jumps in the population choices.
When a newer used planter arrived at our operation, it was decided to go with eSets due to all the hype. I must admit that PP has a great following. What I observed was almost religious in nature.
I have observed that true it is not so necessary to change vacuum settings as much in field corn but no vacuum level provides good singulation with sweet corn and regular field corn disks and singulators. |
Are Precision Planting eSets worth it?
