Sunflower seeds and JD Planter

Managed to get the acre I am planning on planting sunflowers on next spring plowed under yesterday. Amazing 75 Deg day in Oklahoma in February, who would have thunk it. Anyway back to the subject, bought a bag of black oil sunflower seeds from Attwood's to see what size they were in the process of selecting plates for my JD 247 planter.

What I discovered was the seeds in the bag are all different sizes and no way can a plate planter (regardless of what plate is used) work properly with these seeds. What I am wondering is if this is typical with bags of sunflower seeds for bird feed or did I just get too cheap.

Ordered a 1 pound bag of Grey Stripe sunflower seeds from American Meadows to see if they were more consistent in size. May have to bite the bullet and spend $45.00 for a 5 pound bag of seeds if they look OK when I get the 1 pound sample I ordered.

Anyone that has planted sunflowers with a plate planter please let us know what you did. What seed and plates did you use and how did it work out..
Thanks

I have planted sunflowers with both planter and drill. Now I just broadcast by hand and disc in. They are not fussy. I just get the oilseed bird feed. Wife likes to pick flowers, cows love them.

For one acre I would consider hand broadcast or maybe a cyclone spreader on the tractor. Run a drag over them. Putting down extra would be OK. They are a popular food item as you will find out.

That would be the way for all bird seed as the bird does not care for size or shape when it eats the seed of if the seed is even capable of germinating that the seed for birds might not even do. Have to buy as planting seed then it might only be avaible in a plateless grade as what you bought would be considered. Even that 5# bag might be the plateless grade. If it is sold for planting it will say on the bag as to if for plateless or give a plate number for use with plates. And very doughtfull it will have that information.

Thanks for the info gang. Still thinking this through, was hoping to get in with my tiller and level what I have plowed but right now it's too wet. Will post what I discover as I go, maybe it will help the next guy that get the idea of planting sunflowers.

The large seeds I ordered from American Meadows came in and they look real good, still some variation in size but not near as bad as the bird seed. Only issue I might have is Oklahoma storms and wind. These plants get 8 to 10 feet tall with what they say are 12 inch blooms, would be afraid they would get blown over. Not unusually to have 40 MPH straight wind during a thunder storm.

I ordered a one pound bag of black oil seeds from another seed supplier and it was a waste of money. Not any different than the bird seed I bought, large size variations and lots of trash. Thankfully it only cost me $10.00, if you want black oil, just buy bird seed from your local farm supply and broadcast like has been suggested.

American Meadows has other varieties of sunflower seeds but they are not cheap. Looks to me like the (5 to 6 feet tall) Henry Wilde variety is close or the same as Black Oil but at around $100.00 for 5 pounds puts it out of my budget for this project. I may order a one pound bag for ~$20.00 just to see if it's worth the premium price.

I found two sizes of Lincoln plastic seed plates on eBay that are designated for sunflower seeds, B020-24 and B030-24. I had to cut two of the drive cogs out of the plates so they would work with my planter and instead of the BFR2 filler ring I used a cast iron bottom plate turned over so the raised portion was up. Did a test with the Black Oil bird seed using the B030-24 plate and it worked better than I thought it would. It would drop two seeds each time but was really consistent with the two seed drop. Going to try the other plate and see what it does but think if I can find B040-24S plates which have smaller cutouts I may be OK with the bird seed.

Main reason I am wanting to use the planter is weed control, if I plant with the planter I can cultivate and maybe keep the majority of weeds out of my sunflower plot. I watched a bunch of Youtube videos on sunflowers and in one case the poor guy had more weeds than flowers. He broadcast bird seed and the weeds overran the sunflowers because they germinated faster.

Learning as I go, Bob(not a farmer)Reeves

If you check the bird seed bag it will say it is a small percentage of actuall what you want with all kinds of other seed mixed in.That is because they do not clean out the weed seed as the birds will also eat it. That is why he was over run with weeds is because he planted them. I have no idea what planter you have but if you have JD plates that I think from your numbers they are and a JD planter if you had to modify the plate you have something wrong with the planter and a bottom plate is smooth on one side and a grove on the other to take care of slightly thicker seeds. The filler plates are thin to take care of the difference in thickness of the plates for the smaller seed as the plates for them will be only half or a third as thick as a normal plate.

I planted a small plot with my 70 Flexis. Had sunflower plates/fillers, and compared the "fit" of 2 different size seeds with a corn plate. I can't remember the numbers on either plate, but the colors could be used to cross reference. One seed is black oil, other is striped of unknown variety, but grow to over 7'. The first picture is of the sunflower plate. At about 1:00 are 2 black oil seeds. At 3:00 is a single seed of the larger variety. Notice the fit for each.



Next is a picture of a corn plate, with the same seeds. Again, notice the fit.



I used the sunflower plate to plant black oil seeds, the corn plate for the larger striped seed. The plates used on both varieties singulated the seeds fine, nary a double drop. Both seeds were bought from bulk supplies at a local ag store. I didn't have any trouble with weed seeds in the sunflowers, even though the black oil was purchased from a 50# bag labeled for bird feeding. The end result was a good stand of sunflowers. They grew nicely until the deer found them.

The bird seed I bought is all sunflower seeds not the mix my wife normally buys. Only thing in it that isn't sunflower seeds is a bit of trash from stalks. From what I have read on the net it will germinate as well as seed bought for planting, just not as refined as far as size and included trash. The up side is it only costs about a buck a pound. Example from ACE Hardware.
http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=13332979

Not real difficult to tell if any seed will grow. Put several seeds inside a folded paper towel then put it on a saucer and keep it damp for a little longer than the germination period for your seeds. If the seeds are good they will sprout inside the paper towel.

The mod I made to the seed plate was only to make it work in my 247 Corn/Cotton planter. Had to cut two drive cogs out as the drive gear plate in my planter only has two notches. Will try to attach a photo of what I did. Used my Delta scroll saw, only took a second.

I have several different filler plates for my planter, some are as you described, smooth on one side and grooved on the other. I also have some that are smooth on one side and raised on the other to compensate for thinner seed plates. This is the one I used for my test. Hope the photo makes it..

That mode has to be because it is a cotton version and the model number would be just 247 not 246-247, the corn version that I grew up with is just 246 and Later I used 2 different 494 & a 494A planters that I still have. Also own a 450 that is the very first model tractor planter built as a 4 row but is still the first tractor planter built except for the mounted planter for the GP tractor. I also have 4 of the 290 and 2 of the 490 planters setting here.

Buddy of mine has a 246 and the main differences we can distinguish are all in the seed bins and delivery mechanisms.

The photo shows the results of my sunflower bird seed germination test. Pretty impressive, this was only after two days in a wet paper towel and almost everyone sprouted. This tells me, buck a pound bird feed sunflower seeds will grow just fine.

I might be late to the party, but if anyone needs some plates,I have 8 of the B030-24 plates as well as 4 filler rings to go with that size, and I also have 8 BFR 40 filler plates which are a little thicker.

Donovan from Wisconsin

I might be late to the party, but if anyone needs some plates,I have 8 of the B030-24 plates as well as 4 filler rings to go with that size, and I also have 8 BFR 40 filler plates which are a little thicker.

Donovan from Wisconsin

Any chance you have a couple B040-24S plates?

The plastic filler rings will not work on my 247 planter, nothing to hold them in place. I made the mistake of buying two BFR2 filler rings only to discover they wouldn't work and I already had iron filler rings that would work.

Haven't actually planted anything yet. I did run the bird seed through a piece of wire screen hand picking the trash out as I went. Did a good job of sorting out the larger seeds. Ended up with about 1/2 coffee can of fairly consistent size seeds and no trash.

Nope. Only have the few I listed. I bought them with the intention of trying them for pumpkins, but never did anything with them.

Donovan from Wisconsin