I've not been satisfied with our bean planter for quite some time. About 10 years ago I bought a hybrid 15" row planter. It was an odd looking thing the guys who made it built out of leftovers.
It had Case 900 modules and Tye openers. For all its oddities it worked pretty good. It just wasn't large enough for our operation and wasn't heavy enough to no-till double crop
In 2005 Dad and I bought the Case 5500. 30 ft wide drill box with SI belt meters and Case Early Riser openers on 15" rows. Looked like the best of both worlds.
It just had a few quirks. For instance negative tongue weight. When full and raised it would make the back wheels on the tractor light. I almost got it stuck in dry round one time Switching to the 9230 helped.
But the other problems refused to go away. One was the belt meters. They do not handle large seed well ... like at all. And most of our newer varieties are big seeded. The other was in row spacing. The SI belt meters gave an exact population, but you couldn't get it to the ground. The tubes goose necked, etc and seed ended up in bunches.
A couple years ago our 24 ft Great Plains drill got to the point of needing rebuilt. We decided this was the opportune time to upgrade both. So we traded the 24 ft drill and 30 ft bean planter for a 30 ft Great Plains drill.
It does as good as as drill can. The seed spacing is erratic, the population varies, depth control is a good idea. This winter a friend wanted to sell his 30 ft Kinze 23 15" row planter. In a fit of silliness I bought it
We've modified
rebuilt,added a monitor
played with, and finally took it on its maiden voyage Friday
We got rained out, but it seems to work OK
