Planting Sunflowers with a JD 7000 Planter

Kevin Happke · Apr 1, 2020

Looking for information about planting Oil Sunflowers with will it work....can you plant Oil Sunflowers with a JD 7000 Planter......I am also thinking about planting some cut flower type sunflower....and the seed maybe even smaller than oil sunflower seed ......would those work also......Thanks, Kevin....

Bob · Apr 1, 2020

Back in the 80's a neighbor planted thousands of acres per year of oil and confection sunflowers (including some for me) with a 6-row 7000 and a DEERE 720 diesel.

So, yes it will work.

As you probably know, sunflower seed is sold by "size" (for a given variety) and "back in the day" the seed company dealers had information available for planters of many ages and models as to what plates to use and seeding rates for a given size. NOT sure what info they have nowadays for older planters.

Also, (at least around here) some seed dealers had plate sets they'd load out if you bought seed from them.

Ah, the "good old days"!

Kevin Happke · Apr 1, 2020

Hello Bob, Thanks, So I am north A JD man and I am doing this for a non farming friend......So the 7000 planter is a plate planter?

jal-SD · Apr 1, 2020

Yep and the "loan out" types usually went out on a "permant" type of loan in our part of the world.

4520BW · Apr 1, 2020

I planted some for the keck of it one year with my 7200 finger pickup with no troubles. I may have backed off on the population to space them a little further apart.

paul · Apr 1, 2020

Up north here I only ever saw one plate planter 7000. An extremely rare thing. They have finger pickups for corn, seed cups for very inaccurate soybean planting, most now use seed meters made by JD or Kinse that plant beans from a spinning vertical plate sort of.

Down south, jd 7000 plate planters are much more common from what I hear?

I kinda forget that 7000 plate planters were made, because none around here.

Paul

paul · Apr 1, 2020

Here would be some basic info on a finger pickup JD for sunflowers.

https://extension.unl.edu/statewide/panhandle/SunflowerPlanterRecsFromJimJohnson.pdf
Sunny fingers

rlp in Co. · Apr 1, 2020

I worked for a farmer and he had a John Deere 7000 planter. He bought plates to plant sunflower seeds used to make cooking oil for a Canadian company. You can change gears to make it plant seeds the spacing that you want. It was 30 rows 60 ft. wide. If I remember right, I could plant a 450 acre circle in 2.5 or three days. I planted 5 circles. We pulled it with a TW 35 Ford which I later bought. The markers were quite interesting to see unfold. He was hailed out 2 years in a row. He still got $65,000 insurance, but I don't know if that covered his costs. The third year he died and his son sold the organic crop as non organic and only got about half of what it was worth! The sons sold three of the farms to pay the bank. He had seven farms.He was a nice man to work for.

Kevin Happke · Apr 1, 2020

So a JD 7000 finger pickup planter is not very good for planting sunflowers???

Planting Sunflowers with a JD 7000 Planter

Kevin Happke

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Bob

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Kevin Happke

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jal-SD

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4520BW

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paul

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paul

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rlp in Co.

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Kevin Happke

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