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Seeding window closes While a seeding window was open in early June, Robert and Vaughn hurried to get the row crops planted. They planted 600 acres of corn and 100 acres of navy beans. Then, rain again stopped seeding for several days, and the 2004 window for planting row crops closed. They'd wanted to put in about 1,000 acres of row crops. Robert says, "We just couldn't find any more land that was fit for it — at the right time." Robert is set up for eight-row planting, cultivating, cutting and harvesting. He uses 30" row spacing. He'd been using a John Deere 7000-series planter with mechanical seed spacing, but replaced it, and the tractor, in 2004. "It was time to replace the John Deere planter, and we wanted something that was a little more accurate," he says. He replaced it with the first New Holland SP480 planter to be purchased in Manitoba. Robert's dealer imported the planter from Quebec, where row crops are a much bigger part of the farm economy. Until it arrived, Robert had only seen pictures of it. It had to be tweaked for Manitoba conditions, but proved to be just what he needed for 2004. "We've got mostly New Holland equipment," Robert says. "We've dealt there for quite some time and have a good working relationship with our dealer. They are there when we need them." In fact, as he was dealing on the planter he noticed a New Holland TM165 tractor at the dealership and said, "it sure would be nice to put that tractor on the front of that planter." He adds, "One thing led to another, and we changed the tractor at the same time."
"It's very accurate," Robert says. "There's a sensor on each row. It counts the seeds as they drop, one by one. If one row isn't planting right, it will let you know right away on the monitor in the cab. The technology is really right up there." Seed had to be quite uniform for the old mechanical or finger-type planter he'd used. It would sometimes pick up two seeds rather than one. Robert worried about doubles in beans and in corn, even though his seed is quite uniform. The SP480 planter was different. "There were very, very few doubles," Robert says. "Our plant population didn't vary more than about 1,000 from our target. Our target for white beans was around 107,000 per acre. For corn it was 27,000 per acre." He adds, "We're very pleased with the planting efficiency of the SP480. Spacing, especially for corn, is just dead-on. You aim for a certain distance between kernels in the row to achieve a certain plant population per acre. It's really good." Robert could have had issues with seeding depth and hair pinning, but didn't. He was planting on heavy sunflower stubble that had been previously disked prior to sowing. The old planter, he explains, had two discs that were opposite to each other. "They were in-line, and you could get hair pinning with those." The SP480 has offset discs, with separate depth control for each row. "They seem to cut through the trash better. The stalks were chopped up pretty good; still it seemed to cut through those with no problem. Our planting depth was dead-on. It definitely was what we were looking for." Perhaps the best discovery for Robert in this extended, high-pressure planting season was the planting speed he could achieve with the SP480. Maximum speed on the former system was 4.5 mph. Once they had the new planter adjusted correctly, and the new TM165 pulling it with more power, they opened the throttle a little and pushed past the old benchmark. "We could go 7 mph (with the SP480), but we found after a few hours that that was too fast. It was not so much the machine as the man! So, we planted most of it at 6 mph," he says. Their seeding rate approached 10 acres an hour — but more rain was in the forecast. Robert and his son-in-law Vaughn teamed up to keep planting around the clock. Robert says, "We ran it continuously for two days and three nights — 60 hours — and it never had a hiccup the whole time. We were really able to go with it." The TM165 already had 1,500 hours on it, but was just what the Manitoba grower needed. "It's a very smooth, very operator-friendly tractor to run," he says. "We really like it. We found the fuel efficiency was very good and it had lots of power for what we've used it for. We got it mainly for row crop work and for smaller jobs that our other tractors are too big for. We will get a lot of use out of that tractor!" |
