Hi guys I thought I'd change the subject for a bit and ask a question about plate planters. Has anyone had trouble lately with the seed and plate planters? I use an ih 455? Planter and I went with morcorn seed this past year. I relied on my seed dealer to help me match up plates to seed. I wound up with alot of doubles and triples in my rows after it popped up. I went through my planter Before season and it is in great shape and well oiled. It worked flawlessly. The only thing I did wrong was wait until the day of planting to put new drop tubes in and wouldn't you know it, they didn't fit, so I ran without. When I ordered these plastic drop tubes they told me they actually came with and without tubes which was a surprise to me. So after said and done I took leftover seed and grabbed a small handful and laid them out on the table in good light. You could actually see a difference in the sizes by quite a bit. I was told the newer planters this doesn't matter as much so the quality has gone down a bit on separating sizes of seed corns? So my question is do you think my screw up was using no drop tubes or can we blame the seed? Has anyone else ran into this. My doubles were on average 10 ft apart and triples about every 30 ft. This is terrible to me and I know this planter can do better.
well we havent had and problems with that yet we have four of the ih plate planters we have a 56 4 row 38 for parts and a 456 4 row 38 in shed for back up and for corn we use a 56 4 row 38 and for beans we use a 58 6 row 30 i love them old planters they do a great job we have never had to use that 456 and have only took a few parts off the 56 parts planter they are a very reliable planter all of ares have drop tubes and we dont have doubles or triples it plants around 5 inches aparts we have had them ihs for years but alot of it is the seed we used nk last year but usualy we plant dekab 4840 is the best corn we have found if u have any questions i will try ro help ya
I've had grading troubles with some seed. Last year I had a few bags that were supposedly graded as medium flats but a medium round plate worked better. The flat just wouldn't fill every cell. The round did plant a few doubles, but not enough to concern me.
I think that people with plate planters are going to have a harder and harder time as we go along finding well-graded seed that will fit in a plate. Like someone else said, the seed companies aren't as fussy in grading seed nowadays because it doesn't matter as much when the vast majority of growers use some kind of plateless planter now. You may have to find an old seed grader and do it yourself or buy your seed from a small regional supplier that is still using older grading machines the grade the seed closer to what a plate planter requires. There is a guy not too far from me that was having trouble for several years getting seed to fit the plates on his JD 494-A. I see this past year he must have given up on that - his neighbor planted his farm for him with a new JD 16-row 1770 CCS planter - how's that for a change?
yea jd tom some of the seed companies dont care about the small farmers but we buy seed from two dif places one from a family owned seed dealer and the other from the coop in town here the coop is all for the big guys but the guy i work with out there knows alot about finding seed to fit seed plates and the other seed dealer is also really great about knowing which is the best for the plate planter and o like 7 years ago i would say he said u will be happy with the dekab 4840 we said well u know what plate it takes and he looked it up and said what it was and we said will we dont have the plate and he said dont worry about it he ordered four seed plates for are planter and said we could have them
When we used to plant with plate planters we always preferred to use round seed. While not totally impossible to double up it is much harder than with a flat plate. I still like to use round seed due to having a vacuum planter now. Many companies seem to do a better job of sizing round seed over flat. As long and thin as flat plate cells are and as more nearly round the round cell plates are you can readily see how much easier it would be to double a flat cell plate. Mike
