It’s been a wet growing season for many of you, including no-tiller Ray McCormick in southwestern Indiana, where a heavy downpour May 14 drowned about 80% of his corn in a 250-acre field and set back his growing season ever since. 

It was a stressful spring for the 2024 Conservation Ag Operator Fellow, but it would’ve been much worse if he didn’t have cover crops planted on all his acres and if he didn’t have this heavy duty Horsch Maestro 2430 SW corn planter. He switched from a John Deere planter in 2014 to overcome problems he was having with rivets ripping out of the Deere planter’s true V openers and too much disturbance from the fertilizer boot. During a recent No-Till Farmer webinar, McCormick showcased something very unique about the planter. 

“The first thing you might notice is, there’s no row cleaner. There’s no coulter or row cleaner.  If you believe in minimal soil disturbance, then I didn’t like this raking all the residue over and disturbing the residue and so forth. Paul Jasa, the famous guy from Nebraska who does all the research on no-till, does a presentation on why you shouldn’t use a row cleaner because you have a cleared off area and a heavy residue area, and so you have non-uniformity at the soil surface. He wants perfect uniformity. When I don’t move anything, then you have a hard time finding the row. You have a hard time finding slot because of so little disturbance. One of the keys to doing that is you have to have these superior disc openers. These are far bigger and sturdier, and have a great bearing system.” 

Catch McCormick’s full planter walk-through on No-TillFarmer.com and in the August issue of No-Till Farmer’s Conservation Tillage Guide arriving in your mailbox next week. 

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.