During last summer’s Purdue University Top Farmer Crop Workshop, Great Plains Manufacturing demonstrated a new twin-row corn-and-soybean system.

Instead of running both a no-till planter and a no-till drill, this rig may let you no-till both corn and soybeans in narrower rows with less machinery cost.

Save Dollars

The major twin-row advantage is that you don’t have to purchase a new combine corn head, says Tom Evans of Great Plains. With twin rows, he says that you’ll be able to harvest 7 1/2-inch, twin-rowed no-till corn with a 30-inch corn head.

By harvesting the same yields with twin rows as with 15- or 20-inch rows, you’ll save money by using your existing 30-inch row corn head. In addition, twin rows provide enough space between the rows to handle spraying and sidedressing tasks that prove tough to handle with 15- or 20-inch rows.

Evans says twin rows provide an ideal no-till plant spacing that results in considerably less ear loss. Still another plus is more effective light utilization on the bottom of corn plants with twin rows compared to 15-inch rows. But if you expect to harvest higher yields with twin rows, it will take more fertility.

By mounting a singulator-plus meter close to the ground on a new ultra-narrow row unit, Great Plains has found an ideal way to provide accurate seed spacing with no-tilled corn and beans in 7 1/2-inch twin rows. Parallel linkage openers minimize opener bounce and improve seed placement.

One-Pass Seeding, Fertilizing

These no-till planters feature…