Liquid or anhydrous?

[r.reid]

Want to go to a one pass set up. Right now we knife in anhydrous before we seed. We have good results with this but we don`t want to have the 2 steps. Our air drill is a flexicoil 5000 with 7.2 inch spacing. Could a guy mount another row of shanks infront 14.4 inchs apart and still use anhydrous. Or would you just be better off to change openers and go with liquid? Has anyone ever compared the result of each?

[emiled]

Anhydrous is generally cheaper and delivered to the tank ... do not expect any difference in yield impact ... Have a grower with I believe 9" spacing who mounted atom-jet shank openers to apply anhydrous mid-row ... works well but mounting all the shanks on the front caused problems with depth control and strain on the cultivator frame ...

[seedsman]

We have a JD single disk no-till drill. We put all our N down as a liquid dribbled between every set of paired rows. No problems in 3 seasons. Dealer delivers the product to the field (usually on time). We pull a separate tank for the liquid. Average cost has been about 4 cents per pound of N (vs urea), but saves us running to town for 46-0-0. Have never seriously considered adding NH3 to this no-till rig.

[r.reid]

What is the model # of your drill seedsman. Got a brochure on the 1895 seperate fertilizer placement drill. Suppose a person could run liquid down the disk instead of dry.

[seedsman]

Mine is a 7 year old 1850. The new one's with separate placement look great, but cost more.

[emiled]

Other possibilities to consider;
1. Consider double shoot opener e.g. paired row or sideband stealth opener with capability to apply ammonia - can shanks on a 7.2" spacing handle this (is the shank heavy enough - will trash clearance be OK?)
2. Consider ammonia (mid-row)on every other shank and use a spreader type boot on the other openers to spread the seed a bit further ... not totally unlike Bourgault's mid-row ammonia option
3. Any merit in changing configuration to 9" spacing and then using a double shoot stealth opener or something similar?

[r.reid]

Thanks for the ideas emiled.
1. Scared of safe seed seperation (burn) with anhydrous in this method.
2. Just might work. Packers could be a little narrow.
3. The cost and shear work it would take to reconfigure an airdrill from 7" to 9" would be overwhelming. By the time you moved and removed shanks and replaced the packers, you'd probably be better off to trade.

[emiled]

1. Research suggests at least a 1.5" separation (esp. horizontal) between the seed and the ammonia band is desirable to avoid seed injury. Flexicoil's stealth opener (esp. the wide paired row) is capable of this and Flexicoil does promote it's use for this. Conservapak and Anderson openers are also common here for one-pass with ammonia. Morris (gumbo boot) and Dutch openers are also used but I'd like to see more testing with these openers re:separation from seed
2. You're right ... forgot about the narrow packers on a 7.2" spacing

[Freesaw]

Iam using a 5000 with 7" spaceing & narrow packers using adam jet side band openers with liquid fertilizer. Iam very happy with this set up pulls easy and adam jets last forever

[rosco]

We are running a flexi 5000 on 9" spacing with 3.5 V packers. Got it in about 95 and were not happy with the wear of the seed boots. Narrow paired row heavy soil model before the days of carbide. We went to a single side band seed boot to get the seed further away(about and inch) from the fertilizer trench and have more metal to wear before seed placement was poor. With the new carbide tipped points, the seed boot lasts even longer because the point is doing the job of opening the soil and taking most of the wear. We are not using the carbided seed boot because it is too expensive. The drawback of the side band seed boot is that we had to move the packers all 1 inch to the side. We started in the center and shifted the packers out. You have to use half "left" and half "right" handed seed boots. Another drawback is a relatively narrow seed row. If I had to buy a drill now, I would go with the Flex-coil stealth boot with the wide paired row and 4.5"V-steel packer on 10" spacing. I would still use dry fertilizer as I can buy it in the fall, take it home and it is always there in the field.

[Freesaw]

seedsman, how do you like the job your 1850 does seeding? are disk drills high maintenance? are your fields getting rough?

[thomweir]

I don't see any problem with seed safety by going to the midrow solution with a.a. The only problem that I can see is trash clearence. Properly set up and maintaned, using the stealth side band opener works well with a.a.

[furrowtickler]

r.reid, something to chew on.
Some local producers are going from MRB's to liquid N. They claim sigificantly less hp to pull the same footage.
Most guys with 50 ft MRB units reqire 400 hp . If you have the hp it may be a good option, but if you have to upgrade your tractor as well the costs will outstrip any advantage with trying to get good seperation with NH3(MRB's).

[r.reid]

Lots of guys here use MRBs with anhydrous. A few use them with liquid. Liquid fertilizer is quite hard on the MRBs from what I've heard.

[r.reid]

Freesaw...I like you idea. Very economical. Here is a question for you guys. What is the cost differance between liquid vs anhydrous/dry mix??