Narrow Row Planter Has Hopper Extensions

Narrow row planter has hopper extensions PLANTERS Planters 16-2-24 Darrell Brown, Dayton, Texas, salvaged row units from old Deere 51 and 61 planters and mounted them between the units on his 8-row, 36-in. planter to turn it into a 15-row, 18-in. "skip row" soybean planter. He also built three seed hopper extensions to double planter capacity from 17 to 34 bu. "We wanted the yield benefits of narrow rows, but we wanted to use a planter instead of a drill because it has better depth control and we could cultivate if necessary by making skip rows. We found that we were also able to save $3 per acre on crop insurance," says Darrell, who built the planter with the help of his brother Don. "The seed hopper extensions make it easy to use 1,500 lb. bulk bags of seed and allow us to plant twice as many acres without refilling." Brown used sheet metal off old bucket elevators to build the seed hopper extensions which simply mount across the top of the seed hoppers. He cut holes in the bottom of the sheet metal boxes, bending the metal tabs down inside the planter boxes to help hold the extensions in place. He also used rubber strips cut from old rubber inner tubes to hold the extensions down, tieing hooks onto the ends of the rubber strips. Four rubber strips are used on each extension. The top of each extension is sloped to shed rain. Brown increased plant population from 60 lbs. per acre on 36-in. rows to 90 lbs. per acre on 18-in. rows. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Darrell Brown, 101 Sunset Heights, Dayton, Texas 77535 (ph 409 258-2446).

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