Corn Planter/Other Crops

talk to Darrel SD, he plants them

This is the first year in about 10 to 12 years that I have not planted any. In the past, I've used the planter, but most recently, I've just been using my concord air seeder to plant them. My planter was on 30 inch rows, and I went for a population of just over 20,000 seeds per acre. I always used a planter with air units, first model 78 units, then later on 385 deutz units, so I really don't know much about plate planters. The seed disk that I used in the air units was the small/medium corn disk. But that doesn't have much relevance to a plate planter. You might just have to experiment. If you want to harvest bigger seeds, plant less seeds per acre. For smaller seeds, plant them a little thicker. The bigger ones will take longer to dry down for harvesting though. Your best variety for bird seed and wild life food will be a nu-sun, black oil variety. On a descent year, you can get 2,500 pounds per acre. at least that's in this area. You may get more where you are, if it rains more there. They are somewhat of a "drought type" crop, so if you get a lot of rain, they may not root down real good, will get real tall, and high winds can lay them over. As for combining them, a corn head will NOT work. Some folks who raise thousands of acres of them spend 100 grand on a header just for sunflowers. If you plant them on rows, an all crop header will work. What I use on my N6 Gleaner is a converted 24 foot rigid grain head. By "converted", what I mean is that there a few companies that make what they call "sunflower pans" for rigid grain heads. Basically, you remove the reel, and put these pans on. hard to describe them, so I won't. You could google Lucke Pans and see them. For two acres, you may get by just using a grain head as is. Long story short, you have to have a header that cuts the stalk so the whole heads go into the machine. Inside the combine, you need a concave/cylinder clearance of about 1 inch, plus or minus depending on the size of the sunflower head. Cylinder speed of roughly 600 RPM's. Small grain sieves work fine. Wind needs to be turned down, as sunflowers weigh 28 pounds per bushel vs 60 for something like wheat. Don't know what else to tell you. If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. HTH. Darrel