figured out what we did wrong.

[firemanpat2910]

Well we figured out what went wrong with our corn planting last year. We carried all of our plates from the covington planter to the MF dealer in Quincy Fl saturday. The fellow there looked and laughed, said we were using peanut plates. We had stalks about 1 or 2 inches apart,when they should have been 8 to 10. He sold us the correct plates, all the parts for the fertalizer( Note: never leave amonium nitrate in the hopper for a year) and gave us a chart to set up the chain sprockets. Looks like we are all set to plant on satuday morning. total cost was just over $100.00 for parts and just under $100.00 on bolts and hardware, we usualy buy a box of harware at a time instead of just a handfull.

 

[john_bud]

( Note: never leave amonium nitrate in the hopper for a year)

Now, I wonder how YOU found that out???


(like the rest of us probably!)

jb

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Well we figured out what went wrong with our corn planting last year. We carried all of our plates from the covington planter to the MF dealer in Quincy Fl saturday. The fellow there looked and laughed, said we were using peanut plates. We had stalks about 1 or 2 inches apart,when they should have been 8 to 10. He sold us the correct plates, all the parts for the fertalizer( Note: never leave amonium nitrate in the hopper for a year) and gave us a chart to set up the chain sprockets. Looks like we are all set to plant on satuday morning. total cost was just over $100.00 for parts and just under $100.00 on bolts and hardware, we usualy buy a box of harware at a time instead of just a handfull.

You should have a "ground drive" wheel on that planter. Measure the circumfrence (SP????) of the wheel. multiply that by 5. Fill seed hopper with seed, raise planter and turn ground drive 5 complete revolutions. Catch seed coming out of seed drop. Count them and divide total inches (cir X 5) by number of seeds. That'll give you the seed SPACING.

 

[firemanpat2910]

FWJ I knew you have advise on this one. On this model there is a sprocket on the grround wheel, and a sprocket
on the shaft for the plates. luckily my buddy had several different ones piled up in the pile with spare cultivator plows, and we used the chart to get the spacing close as we could. last year we went through 100+# of seed for around 5 or 6 acres of corn patches. There is a pic on the favorite implement thread that shows a covington planter just like the one we were setting up. Weather here is great, ready to plant at daylight saturday, All I have left to do is check my trailer and we are ready to go farmin.

 

[PSDStu]

FWJ I knew you have advise on this one. On this model there is a sprocket on the grround wheel, and a sprocket
on the shaft for the plates. luckily my buddy had several different ones piled up in the pile with spare cultivator plows, and we used the chart to get the spacing close as we could. last year we went through 100+# of seed for around 5 or 6 acres of corn patches. There is a pic on the favorite implement thread that shows a covington planter just like the one we were setting up. Weather here is great, ready to plant at daylight saturday, All I have left to do is check my trailer and we are ready to go farmin.

Hey Pat, sounds like a good plan for Saturday morning! I will be going to a farm auction in Greenwood FL on Saturday morning and will be planting my Silver Queen, Florida Staysweet, and some Field Corn on Monday morning. Have Fun!

 

[SCDolphin]

how may row planter is it??

 

[gemini5362]

My old massey ferguson 65 was set up so that you could run the power take off with the wheels. As the wheels turned so did the PTO. I assumed that was for running a planter.

 

[redlevel]

Pat, are these the planters?

The method FWJ described will give you spacing information no matter what combo of plates/sprockets you are using. Even that can be misleading, though, because sometimes the individual cells on the plates pick up more than one seed. Then, instead of being spaced 8 inches or 10 inches, or whatever spacing you are looking for, you will have two stalks coming up almost together with one more, or two or three more, depending on how many seed the cell picked up, coming up 8 inches away. That probably sounds confusing, so when I plant corn in a couple of weeks I'll try to post some pictures to illustrate. When I get my seed, I'm going to take a grinder to my corn plates to insure the cells pick up only one seed at the time. The old Covingtons aren't exactly what you'd call state-of-the-art precision planters, but they have been doing a pretty good job for a lot of years now. Did your dealer sell you 4 cell plates?

Here is some corn I planted with JD 71 planters about 10 years ago. The spacing was about 4 inches in 36 inch rows. I plowed down 2 tons per acre of chicken litter before planting with 70 additional units of N added when the corn was a little less than knee high. Then, I averaged about 4 hours of sleep per night for a month trying to keep it irrigated. I had about 100 acres that year. That's me standing in one of the lanes we cut for a traveling gun to run. We averaged 160 bushels per acre, but burned up a lot of diesel fuel.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

My old massey ferguson 65 was set up so that you could run the power take off with the wheels. As the wheels turned so did the PTO. I assumed that was for running a planter.

Mostly used for ground driven manure spreaders and hay rakes. I don't recall ever seeing a pto driven corn planter.

 

[firemanpat2910]

its a 2 row planter that you can set up to run 1 hopper or 2 on each row, depending on plate choice and sprocket ratio.

Weather is perfect, just enough sprinkle of rain last night to settle the dust, I'm goin plantin in the mornin...