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Over on New Ag Talk - Crops there are two major schools of thought and one small one. One school believes seed firmers drag the seed and so upset the even spacing the planter works so hard to make. And in that dragging smears the dirt if its wet making a hard layer for the roots to break through. Another school believes seed firmers don't drag the seed but just shove it down into the bottom of the seed trench for more intimate seed to soil contact. They also sometimes use seed firmers with liquid fertilizer plumbing to put some liquid along side the seed. The small school likes the rebounders to keep the seed from bouncing and rolling, but may not drag the seed. I couldn't tell any difference in seed bunching after I added seed firmers to my Cyclo 400 seed spiller. The slop in the drum drive and irregular friction in the pipes tends to guarantee seed bunching. With the better JD 7000 planter that I'm using now, I doubt seed firmers would improve the stand so I've not bothered with them. Having good opening disks, good seed brushes in the seed meters and calibrated seed meters are far more important. Using trash whippers and maybe a straight coulter to cut the straw so the trash whippers can push it aside are most important for notil planting. And for beans, the Kinze bean meters are far superior to Deere bean cups that kind of measure the volume of beans spilled. Kinze bean meters count the beans precisely. Gerald J.
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