lastcowboy32
Well-known Member
The 5400 is called a "Plant Aire" by White; since it uses blowers on the seed hoppers.
I borrowed one from a friend of mine, who bought it to do food plots for deer.
I wanted to use it for a couple of acres of sweet corn.
When I first borrowed it, it still had some of his "deer corn" in it.
I decided to test it, by running the deer corn into some ground that was going to get tilled later.
Anyway, what I noticed was that the seed started blowing around in the hopper, once the hopper was empty and only seed that remained was down in the plastic wheel (for lack of a better term).
So, that gave me a conundrum. The lady that sold us the seed told us to plant 6 varieties of sweet corn to have a smooth progression of maturation.
That meant that I only had about 5 pounds of each type of seed. Not really enough to even put a dent in the hopper.
I was concerned that it would start blowing around, instead of planting... So... what I did was to use a measuring cup to put an equal amount of seed into all four hoppers of the empty planter.
By the time I finished my first bag of seed, the seed was all down in the pipe, not even showing in the hopper.
So then I measured equal amounts of my next variety and added...
Still not quite in the hopper.
So I did the same with the third variety.
No I was working in the hopper.
Then I would plant a couple of passes and check the hopper...when the seed level was just below the bottom of the hopper and showing in the pipe... I added equal amounts of the next variety.
Did that for varieties 4, 5, and 6.
I still had some land left, so I put black oil sunflower on top of the remaining corn seed and just finished planting the rest of the corn...and then sunflower until I ran out of land.
It was tedious...is there a better way?
Was I right to be concerned about when the seed starts blowing around in the hopper? Did I actually always need to keep enough in there to prevent that?
I borrowed one from a friend of mine, who bought it to do food plots for deer.
I wanted to use it for a couple of acres of sweet corn.
When I first borrowed it, it still had some of his "deer corn" in it.
I decided to test it, by running the deer corn into some ground that was going to get tilled later.
Anyway, what I noticed was that the seed started blowing around in the hopper, once the hopper was empty and only seed that remained was down in the plastic wheel (for lack of a better term).
So, that gave me a conundrum. The lady that sold us the seed told us to plant 6 varieties of sweet corn to have a smooth progression of maturation.
That meant that I only had about 5 pounds of each type of seed. Not really enough to even put a dent in the hopper.
I was concerned that it would start blowing around, instead of planting... So... what I did was to use a measuring cup to put an equal amount of seed into all four hoppers of the empty planter.
By the time I finished my first bag of seed, the seed was all down in the pipe, not even showing in the hopper.
So then I measured equal amounts of my next variety and added...
Still not quite in the hopper.
So I did the same with the third variety.
No I was working in the hopper.
Then I would plant a couple of passes and check the hopper...when the seed level was just below the bottom of the hopper and showing in the pipe... I added equal amounts of the next variety.
Did that for varieties 4, 5, and 6.
I still had some land left, so I put black oil sunflower on top of the remaining corn seed and just finished planting the rest of the corn...and then sunflower until I ran out of land.
It was tedious...is there a better way?
Was I right to be concerned about when the seed starts blowing around in the hopper? Did I actually always need to keep enough in there to prevent that?