JD 7000 corn planter to no till

[Brian662]

I have a JD 7000 4 row corn/bean planter that I want to put some no-till coulters on. Does anybody have experience with this type of planter doing no till?

My planter already has down pressure springs that I can tighten up. The guy who I bought it from (and who is selling me the no till coulters) said that to cut through brush hogged corn it would be fine as long as it was pretty well chopped up. He said i could get the sweepers but they are $200/coulter and I would prefer not to pay that. Obviously with a rotation between beans and corn I'd have to at some point plant into the chopped corn. The other option would be to broadcast a green summer crop, buckwheat or similar, and do a cereal grain or brassica planting following the year after it's corn.

What do you guys think the best options are in heavy clay soil? How will the no-till coulters work in this soil?

Right now I have a tiller that I'd prefer to get rid of instead of pulverizing my soil to use the planter.

 

[buckdeer1]

How heavy is your soild?I just got an agri supply catalog today that had coulters.Can you take and try it just pulling through dirt,what does it have now?The only thing about those is I would think they would limit what you can plant with them.

 

[Brian662]

My unit is around 2,000 pounds. Thats with the seed boxes and fertilizer boxes empty.
Right now it has down pressure springs, seed openers, and press wheels.
I have the corn meter and bean cups for it, so I'm definitely limited to what I can plant (only other thing may be sunflowers). I don't have any misconceptions about planting other stuff with it, I'd just like to be able to no till beans and corn as part of my food plot program. I have access to cheap seed (free)from the leftovers of my ag renters.

 

[Brian662]

These are a few pics I snapped of the seed delivery method currently in place.

 

[BuckSutherland]

I have a JD 7000 4 row corn/bean planter that I want to put some no-till coulters on. Does anybody have experience with this type of planter doing no till?

My planter already has down pressure springs that I can tighten up. The guy who I bought it from (and who is selling me the no till coulters) said that to cut through brush hogged corn it would be fine as long as it was pretty well chopped up. He said i could get the sweepers but they are $200/coulter and I would prefer not to pay that. Obviously with a rotation between beans and corn I'd have to at some point plant into the chopped corn. The other option would be to broadcast a green summer crop, buckwheat or similar, and do a cereal grain or brassica planting following the year after it's corn.

What do you guys think the best options are in heavy clay soil? How will the no-till coulters work in this soil?

Right now I have a tiller that I'd prefer to get rid of instead of pulverizing my soil to use the planter.

I run a small farm operation. My planter is a 6 row JD 1750 finger pick up. Basically just a newer model then yours. 2 years ago I started no-tilling. Next year half of my bean acres will be no-till. I have some very heavy/high organic matter soil in McLeod county. It produced 200+ bushel corn last year in D3 drought conditions. I'm dealing with LOTS of residue most of the time.


1. Dont chop the stalks. Let the previous crop stand and just plant between the old rows. If you chop you have more residue to deal with where you are tying to plant. After I combine I DO NOT chop the stalks where I intend to no till the following year
2. I run martin floating row cleaners and have the teeth meshed for no till. (expensive- probably $600+ a row these days. $425 when I bought a few years ago, but they work awesome)
3. Closing the seed trench will be just as important as opening it
4. It will work like shit in wet conditions
5. I dont run a no-till coulter. I just fill the seed boxes full and I put on new openers and I put the seeding depth a hair lower then conventional til
6. I run the press wheels a little stiffer in the no till

7. You might be just fine with a no till coulter if you leave the old stuff standing, but there are some decent used row cleaners on craigslist. Kinda wanna run the row cleaners a little aggressive to sweep some of the shit out of your way.
8. Beans for a food plot shouldnt be that fussy. As long as you get them covered with dirt they will grow once it rains.
9. You can be prone to "crusting" if you work in wet conditions. The beans will snap their necks trying to emerge.

 

[Brian662]

I run a small farm operation. My planter is a 6 row JD 1750 finger pick up. Basically just a newer model then yours. 2 years ago I started no-tilling. Next year half of my bean acres will be no-till. I have some very heavy/high organic matter soil in McLeod county. It produced 200+ bushel corn last year in D3 drought conditions. I'm dealing with LOTS of residue most of the time.


1. Dont chop the stalks. Let the previous crop stand and just plant between the old rows. If you chop you have more residue to deal with where you are tying to plant. After I combine I DO NOT chop the stalks where I intend to no till the following year
2. I run martin floating row cleaners and have the teeth meshed for no till. (expensive- probably $600+ a row these days. $425 when I bought a few years ago, but they work awesome)
3. Closing the seed trench will be just as important as opening it
4. It will work like shit in wet conditions
5. I dont run a no-till coulter. I just fill the seed boxes full and I put on new openers and I put the seeding depth a hair lower then conventional til
6. I run the press wheels a little stiffer in the no till

7. You might be just fine with a no till coulter if you leave the old stuff standing, but there are some decent used row cleaners on craigslist. Kinda wanna run the row cleaners a little aggressive to sweep some of the shit out of your way.
8. Beans for a food plot shouldnt be that fussy. As long as you get them covered with dirt they will grow once it rains.
9. You can be prone to "crusting" if you work in wet conditions. The beans will snap their necks trying to emerge.




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Thanks for all the info. Unfortunately since my corn won't be harvested (I just leave it stand for the critters) I won't have the same success you've displayed. I also won't be doing corn on corn, so if I wind up row planting beans into the corn, would you just drive over the standing corn stalks while planting the following year's beans?

 

[Brian662]

I reread what you posted Buck and it looks like you addressed my previous question on #7. I like the idea of planting into the standing corn, just less time spent on the tractor brush hogging.

 

[BuckSutherland]

Thanks for all the info. Unfortunately since my corn won't be harvested (I just leave it stand for the critters) I won't have the same success you've displayed. I also won't be doing corn on corn, so if I wind up row planting beans into the corn, would you just drive over the standing corn stalks while planting the following year's beans?

Yes, just leave it stand even if its 8-10 feet tall and drive in and start planting. It might work great. The biggest issue with no-till is competing with the corn residue on the ground. A bunch of my neighbors would be no-tilling if they could figure out how to deal with the residue. Yours is already out of the way if/when its still standing. A bunch of it will get knocked over as you drag the planter through, but who cares as long as the seed is getting into the soil and getting covered.

 

[Brian662]

What do you mean whe you say crusting? I'm very amateur at farming and don't know the lingo. I tried looking it up but didn't find anything.

 

[Brian662]

BTW, your soil looks awesome. I'm on the outer edges of bluff country here and still plenty of hills, and the corn in the bottoms on my place usually does around 200 bushel and the hills get 180ish. Beans normally get close to 60 bushel here, doesn't seem to matter whether it's the hills or the bottoms.

 

[Brian662]

Yes, just leave it stand even if its 8-10 feet tall and drive in and start planting. It might work great. The biggest issue with no-till is competing with the corn residue on the ground. A bunch of my neighbors would be no-tilling if they could figure out how to deal with the residue. Yours is already out of the way if/when its still standing. A bunch of it will get knocked over as you drag the planter through, but who cares as long as the seed is getting into the soil and getting covered.

I guess my biggest concern at that point would be whole stalks getting into the openers and plugging them up. I can certainly give it a shot to see how it'll go.

 

[BuckSutherland]

Our soils here in McLeod county can be quite sticky at times. If you are planting when its wet and you run the press wheels too hard the soil can rapidly dry out and form a hard crust on top. A nice warm rain can solve that issue, but if you get a crust on top and no rain with the sun baking the crust the beans wont be able to push through. Working with wet soil can turn it into a brick.

I always plant my beans as shallow as I possibly can but get them into moisture to germinate (usually around 1-1.5"). When I hit the no till I like to go 1/4-1/2" deeper just because the row unit and gauge wheels like to hop a little more. I'm always out of the tractor digging and scratching across the various soil types just to make sure I'm getting the beans into moisture.

If the soil is sticking to the gauge wheels its probably way too wet to be planting. You want it to appear nice and dry for at least the first half inch. Its better if the top inch is dry for the no till. Beans are simple to grow. Just get a little dirt on them and we can usually hook a rain to do the rest.

 

[buckdeer1]

I would try it in a untilled field even with some old seed to see if it cut slot and covers seed.Agree with about don't plant when wet and don't backup with raising planter.There was a 4 ft tye drilll on Wichita ks craigs list earlier this week and whether narow or wide the biggest difference between a drill and planter can be row spacing.I would try befor I spent money.I use an old vanbrundt drill to drill wheat as a no till in my light soil

 

[Bassattackr]

Used a JD 7000 w/ no til coulters to plant into our clay soil a couple years ago. Soil was worked first (no trash) so not apples to apples.. Clay based soil seems to crust a lot quicker and harder than most though FWIW. Can also run a single press wheel instead of both for a little more down pressure if the trench isn't closing.

Yetter Stalk Devastators would be sweet to attach to the front end of that planter, knocking down the old standing corn as you planted between the old rows. Too bad they are so expensive! But in this case, the height of the corn works in your favor, the planter bar will knock it down for you. I would think your biggest issue would be corn residue when going back to corn after beans. You may still have a lot of trash as it was never chopped or incorporated, only bent close to the ground with the planter bar.

Worst case, you can always come back after planting and brush hog at 45 or 90 degrees if the corn wasn't pinned well enough with the planter on the initial pass, and chop away..

@BuckSutherland - How deep do you run those row cleaners before it becomes strip tilling instead of no till ?? Just giving you a hard time, looks great. I envy your dark soil!

 

[BuckSutherland]

My row cleaners float so the only thing that keeps them down is their own weight. They follow the contours and mellowness of the soil as I drive along. Most row cleaners on the market are fixed or stationary and some of those can really plow a trench. Mine dont dig in much at all doing the no-till, they just mound the trash up. If I set them deeper in the conventional tillage they can do a little digging. And yes, I farm so heavy soil. Can be a real curse in the wet years.


In the spring I just do one pass with my JD 960 field cultivator and then I start planting. These first 3 pics are from spring of 2021. That field was the no till bean field from my pictures above. It was the most mellow spring soil I have ever encountered. The last two pics are from conventional tillage last spring. I will be no-tilling those same areas this coming spring. That's what 250+ bushel corn ground looks like. I have raised the organic matter considerably in the 10+ years I have farmed this stuff. I do less tillage then anyone around and yields just keep climbing. I love having residue on top of the soil. It cushions the soil in heavy rain events. Nothing has been as detrimental to my farming career as heavy spring rains. I puke at the sight of lost topsoils.

 

[Brian662]

A few weeks behind but I've got some crops in the ground. I don't care about 200 bushels or 15% moisture, its all for the critters.
Seems to be burying the seed deep enough without any adjustments. The row cleaners are badass! LFG!!

 

[buckdeer1]

How many acres is that?Looks big enough to farm

 

[Brian662]

It's an 8 acre field that was farmed and I was almost dumb enough to enroll in CRP before the NRCS showed their incompetence. Now it's going to be 6.5 ac of habitat and 1.5 ac of food plot.

 

[Diesel5610]

What row cleaners did you go with?

 

[Brian662]

I got some used ones for a couple hundred bucks. I think I paid $500 for the coulters and cleaners.