On April 20, Neil Remple began seeding his 10th consecutive crop with a Peacock Precision Seeder conversion on his JD 665 air seeder. The Moosomin, Sask., farmer plants 1,500 acres each year, with a variety of crops including wheat, barley, canola, flax, canaryseed and peas.
“It’s an older seeder, the one with that yellow 80 bushel tank on top,” said Remple. “I pull an anhydrous tank behind and my air cart is a 60-40 split, so I put phosphate down with the seed and all the nitrogen goes down the knife at the front. It’s one-pass seeding, except when we do peas.
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“I use the Dutch Eagle carbide tip. It wouldn’t be more than three-quarters of an inch (two centimetres) wide. It seems to cut a narrow enough track that it leaves a fresh soil bank for the seed shoe.
“I really like the depth control. That’s the important thing about it. A lot of expensive seeders still don’t have depth control this good. With the packer wheels so close behind the seed shoe, you don’t get depth problems on soft or variable soft ground. That makes for very even germination.”
Remple said he seeds most crops slightly deeper than 2.5 cm. When he seeds peas, he cross harrows at a right angle to help smooth out the surface.
“Sometimes I think that if my settings were maybe just a little better, maybe my germination could be better than it is. Last year my flax was thin. I foolishly thought I should seed a shade deeper because it was so dry. That was a mistake. I just went a whisker deeper, but it was too deep.
“Overall, my germination has been excellent over the years. I don’t know if I’d say it’s right up there with Seed Hawk, but I can say we get very uniform germination and emergence across the fields.”
Remple’s cultivator is a 29 foot model set up on 14 inch centres, giving him 24 individual runs. He uses the older style five inch paired-row seed shoe. He said he has never had a breakdown with the seeder conversion, but it requires maintenance.
“There’s several moving parts, so you would expect to have to do some regular maintenance. The wheel bearings have to be checked and replaced fairly regularly, probably every couple of years. The shoes wear very well. I’d say the things have worked very well for us.”
