Planter Designed For 60-In. Rows

Planter Designed For 60-In Rows PLANTERS Joe Breker’s planter leaves lots of room for cover crop growth with its 60-in wide paired rows What his planter does that others can’t is to easily vary the space between the paired rows     “I’m comparing pairs with 8 6 4 and 2- in between them as well as single rows all with 60-in spacing ” says Breker “The idea is to see if there’s any difference in yields or in cover crop growth ”     Breker started sketching out a design for the planter with 4 paired rows in late February and it was ready to go by May 1st He used AGCO Precision Planting 9000 row units with vDrives and vSet meters for accurate spacing DeltaForce automated downforce control and SpeedTubes for high-speed planting Dakota Precision a local fabricator put it all together     Breker expects to see a 5 to 8 percent yield compromise with the single row 60’s with a 32 000 seeding rate over single row 30’s with a 30 000 seeding rate He hopes to get lost yield back with his paired rows at 32 000 seeds per acre The goal with the 60’s over standard 30-in rows is to successfully interseed cover crops     Although he tried interseeding cover crops between 30-in rows the lack of light shaded out the plants “The goal is to have a living cover crop when the corn is harvested ” says Breker     He has been doing bio-strip till for the past 10 years planting a multi-species cover crop into cereal stubble and following that with corn the next spring He plants specific cover crops into the row where the corn will be planted     “I have found that flax fava radish and rye are best ” says Breker     He follows his corn crop with a crop of soybeans A fourth year in the rotation goes to radish rye or camelina Vol 44 No 3 cover crops raised for seed     Planting started May 2 with Breker using the planter on all his corn acres By the middle of June he had interseeded with a Great Plains press drill He removed openers to avoid the corn rows     “I planted a 6-way mix of fava beans alfalfa flax oats rye and wheat ” says Breker “I hope the alfalfa and rye will overwinter The corn and the covers looked great by late July ”     Breker has been planting paired rows for 40 years This year in addition to his own fields he planted some 60-in test plots for neighbors     “It’s a great way to promote cover crops ” says Breker who sells Jackhammer Radish seed to wholesalers and retails rye into Iowa and Missouri     Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Joe Breker 13989 98th St SE Havana N Dak 58043 ph 701 680-0379; nohojoe@hotmail com

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