We had a John Deere 7000 for many years but this past winter we bought a Deere 7200 6RN Conservation planter.

Marcus and Joanne Reinke, Concordia, Mo. I came up with all these ideas on my own, but the only thing that made it work were the “tech” people at my local dealership. Mechanically I did most all of the work myself, but electrically it was completely them.Īs a result of my upgrades I get better seed placement and emergence, easier control of plant population and fertilizer rates, automatic row shut-off, more efficient fertilizer placement, and, in the long run, more profit and a newer planter to take me to my retirement. This year I added two 150-gallon tanks and SureFire fertilizer starter package - also connected through the Ag Leader system. Also, we installed Yetter SharkTooth floating row cleaners, Thompson closing wheels with lighter springs and toe-out wedges, along with Graham electric drives controlled by a new Ag Leader Integra system. So I stripped the frame of the Kinze row units and drives and kept the markers. I mounted new White 9000 units with air metering and 3-bushel hoppers on the machine. I wanted to upgrade but ran into a problem: Today, neither Kinze, nor any of the other major brands, build 12-row planters on 20-inch spacings, and I certainly couldn’t justify a 40- or 60-foot machine. In 2007 I bought a new 12-row, 3400 Kinze planter with 20-inch spacings and used it up through last year.

I hope to get better seed placement, as well as not having chains to drive my meters.

This winter I am going to install DeltaForce and vDrive on all corn rows, as well as v-Drives and meters on my soybean rows. Then last year, I bought Precision Planting’s FieldView option and a few more weigh pins to study, more thoroughly, my planter’s down pressure. I only got spring down pressure for the row units, since I was thinking of going with a hydraulic downforce system in the future. I also installed the company’s WaveVision seed tubes and V-set vacuum meters. I installed a Precision Planting’s SeedSense 20/20 monitor and air clutches from my previous planter. I have a 16/32-row Kinze 3600 ASD Kinze planter I bought in 2013 with no wiring harness, seed tubes, corn meters or monitor.

Knowing planters are perhaps the most important machine on a no-tiller’s farm, No-Till Farmer editors recently surveyed readers about the upgrades they’ve made to their planters, and why - and what they might have in mind for this growing season. The infinite variability of individual farms and growing conditions has fueled a booming industry in aftermarket attachments designed to help no-tillers and strip-tillers boost the efficiency of an assembly-line planter.

John deere 1770 planter fs19