[jvw]

I've been checking the results of my first year with an air drill, Concord with Dutch precision paired row and no harrows or closers. In no-till, the results are positive, very even emergence and depth, but in tilled ground, the depth is very variable. These openers move a lot of dirt, regardless of speed, the walking beam packers don't equalize the seedbed the way gang packers do. End result being, the front rank being buried in places, the back rank and anything behind a wheel leaving seed uncovered. Almost never short of moisture here, so I try to seed as shallow as possible, even leaving some Canola above ground, as it generally germinates.
Most every other Concord I've seen has either had harrows or pheonix rotary harrows mounted, and I can see why. I prefer to keep the seed in the bottom of a trench than level the ground out completely, seems to be less crusting in our clay, faster emergence wet or dry, and less weed competition. Would 2 bar harrows completely level the ground ahead of the packers eliminating the trench? Are they aggresive enough to uncover the front rank? What is the idea behind the individual tines mounted to each shank, as opposed to mounted harrows? I've never seen a Phoenix in action, do they move a lot of dirt, and would they mess up the rows in shallow Canola? Do they give any grief in trash or mud, or cause compaction?

I also had a lot of grief setting the depth. The geometry of the phasing cylinders is not quite correct( I worked out the volumes, it CANNOT lift level), it was adjusted level at the top, but as it goes down, both sets of wings go up relative to center. The cylinders are not creeping or leaking, they rephase at the top as they are supposed to. So after much work, I got the machine level at working depth, but when I change depth significantly, it is no longer level. Since I am performing both till and no till, in a wide range of soil types, often in the same field, all requiring different depths, that is a nuisance.
In no till, the wheel tracks are insignificant, but in worked ground I need to be able to set a few shanks much deeper. Plus there is much more weight on the inner and middle castors than on the outers , in soft soil, the outer wings ride much higher as a result. Shimming would be a big job on a regular basis, adjusting the threads on each cylinder whenever conditions change is no fun. With the phasing cylinders, I can't easily just set the center section deeper to reach the wheel tracks. I'm considering plumbing the cylinders in parallel so that I can use the depth stops to set each section independently, could even tip the front up to keep the front rank from being so deep. Has anyone tried that, will the machine still lift relatively even or will it lift in stages? Could even get complicated and add a bunch of manual valves and hoses to switch between series and parallel depending on the conditions.

This may not be such an issue on a normal year( whatever that is), this year the seedbed was never more than 1/4" down to pure mud, and the tires were often built up with mud affecting depth as well.

Would converting the drill to 4 rank help much? Only 1/4 instead of 1/3 of the runs would be at risk of being buried, it would move some runs closer to the packer wheels, should help keep them more consistent depth compared to being in the middle, and would move some weight to the press wheels and off the casters. Can you still mount harrows with 4 ranks? It plugged very rarely with 3 ranks, so that is not a motivation.

I expect the best answer is go and buy a parallel link drill and eliminate all of these problems, but that's not quite in the budget.

 

[jvw]

I got kind of distracted and rambling, but what I was trying to ask is if there is a way to use individual harrow tines, or closers to just uncover the front rank, or recover the rear rank and leave the rest of the seed trenches as is?

 

[mbcat]

As far as the phasing goes do your wings have the extra black depth stops in. They are needed for 3 section and 5 section Concords ,this should balance out the unequal volume in the rams . The uneven seeding depth between front and back is common. Tire pressure will help release some of the mud buildup but lowering the rear with the threaded rods is more even. My concord is a 4 rank and in firm dry conditions enough soil will fall to cover the seed, this was rare in gumbo, not enough room for harrows before the packers so I made a set of harrows to tow behind the cart. They work good but not as good as harrowing with diamond harrows going at an angle but way better than nothing if caught by rain.

 

[SouthernSK]

Flexicoil for the 5000 drill had a single row of harrows that mounted just in front of the tires so the tip of the harrow was in between the very front of the tires. This positioning allowed the tires to strip the piles of straw and prevent plugging. They helped a lot. You could put disk levelers on the back couple rows. If you could afford it disk levelers on the whole machine is the best but most expensive option. All disk levelers are not created equal. I would not phase the cylinders but use depth stops at each cylinder for control. Phoenix harrows seemed to help as well from watching my neighbors. They at least can handle the straw. Two bars of harrows would make lots of straw piles.

 

[jvw]

mbcat, Doesn't matter how the depth stops are arranged, the cylinder(s) with the shallowest depth stops will set the whole machine, As far as I can tell, the cylinder stops on each cylinder are just a redundancy in case they cylinders creep. But in respone, yes, it does have extra stops on the wing cylinders. If I let some oil out in field position to level the machine, they simply rephase the next time it is lifted all the way up. By measure, each cylinder is an 8" stroke, but because the volumes are not equal, the center section will stroke the full 8", the inner wings a little less, and the outer wings even less yet, unless I let some oil out of the lines, then they travel the full 8".

Trying to avoid another pass over the field with harrows, wheel tracks are my enemy in this soil.

 

[Christian A. Herrnboeck]

Just forget rephrasing and plumb all cylinders in parallel then.

They may not come up even but they would all hit the depth stops.

 

[jvw]

Christian, I believe you are using a Concord, do you see the same thing, or am I just too fussy?

 

[Christian A. Herrnboeck]

No... I'm just as fussy.


What I did was go to my seeding depth on the main 4 for cereals and level the drill there with 12 psi in the Packers. First side to side then front to back with thr front a quarter inch higher than the back. My rams are the new style so they re phase properly but geometrically they don't level in the ground when they are up.

For canola I leveled it once and marked the nuts holding the rams with an engraver. 5 sides off of cereals is my canola setting.


I use farmland 5" sweeps and spreader boots which give you 3 "steps" but all three seed the same depth this way.

 

[Christian A. Herrnboeck]

That seems like a confusing explanation... I'll type out s better one when I'm on a real computer... or you can call me 306 231 7673

 

[case]

We run farmland seed boots with sweeps on a 4010 Concord. Every single shank has the disk levelers on them to achieve a smooth field after seeding. They may be the answer for you as I believe a neighbor running dutch knives also runs disk levelers on all his shanks.

As far as leveling, we just usually have the wings set a bit deeper to achieve similar depth, but our depth isn't quite as critical due to the sweeps helping dig in and only seeding cereals (usually only spring wheat). Our soybean and sunflower acres are now seeded with a planter.