No-TillPlanter Clears Residue Off Row, Strip-Tills, & Incorporates Herbicides

No-TillPlanter Clears Residue Off Row, Strip-Tills, & Incorporates Herbicides PLANTERS Planters 20-4-6 You can't buy a planter like the one built by Scott Luckett, Junction, Ill., because there's nothing out there like it. Luckett's planter clears residue off the row, applies herbicides in a band over the row, incorporates chemicals and strip-tills the row, knifes in starter fertilizer to the side of the furrow, and then finally plants the seed. "I've still got a few refinements to make but it works better than any planter I've ever used," says Luckett, who raises corn, milo and soybeans. The home-built planter consists of two separate units. A row-clearing toolbar mounts on the tractor 3-pt., while a Deere Max-Emerge planter trails behind, pulled by a bridge hitch. Each row unit on the row-clearing toolbar, which Luckett put together from scratch, consists of a gauge wheel off an IH Cyclo planter and two sets of concave discs that clear residue. The guage wheel has 4 in. of vertical adjustability so Luckett can adapt to differing residue conditions or soils. The front set of discs are set parallel about 12 in. apart with the concave sides to the inside. They slice through residue. The second set of discs mount at an angle, with the concave sides out. They move residue out of the row strip. The entire row clearing assembly mounts on a spring-loaded parallel link-age. The big C-clamps on the toolbar were taken from a Lilliston cultivator. Luckett bought springs from Yetter and copied Yetter's quick-adjust sliding spring assembly. Discs mount on assemblies off Lilliliston spider gangs. On the trailing 6-row Deere planter, Luckett cut off the front 2 1/2-in. sq. toolbar and replaced it with a heavier 3 1/ 2-in. toolbar that supports one 4-in. pipe per row. Each pipe mounts on a spring-loaded parallel linkage and carries a spray box, two sets of Lilliston spider wheels, and a fertilizer knife. Luckett's home-built metal spray boxes mount out front. He sets them so they just clear the ground. The 14-in. wide boxes are built heavy enough to move large clods out of the way. The boxes are 14 in. wide. There are slots in the side that make them easy to adjust up or down as needed. Luckett usually applies a band of herbicides about 12 in. wide. A front-mounted tank on the tractor carries chemicals. The two sets of spider wheels right be-hind the spray box incorporate the chemicals and "strip-till" the seedbed. A knife assembly right behind the spider wheels injects 28% nitrogen (or 10-34-0, depending on the crop) off to the side of the row. Luckett uses Redball spray monitors to keep track of the spray boxes and the six fertilizer knives. To make daily maintenance easier on the planter, he took a grease bank off an old Massey 510 combine and ran 3/16-in. copper lines from it to the 6 pivot points on the lift wheels. "This planter gives me the adjustability I need to adapt to different crops and conditions, and we're planting into a tilled seed-bed so seed placement and germination is excellent," notes Luckett. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Scott Luckett, 9450 W. Portal Rd., Junction, Ill. 62954 (ph 618 272-4331).

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