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Rawlins County Kansas | We've planted right back into cornstalks with both a 30' and 40' 9433 Sunflower over the years and pretty much we're never happy with the stand (and this is into 100 bu/ac corn). We run the cornstalk shields and even built another set of shields above those to keep the pesky stalks from taking out fertilizer and seed tubes. They are just too light in that they can not evenly transfer the drill weight across the openers. The openers under the center box do ok, but the wings start riding as soon as the box gets even slightly empty. They ride over stalks, can't cut root balls and just don't have both the residue cutting strength and the necessary downpressure to put seed where a guy wants it. Then on top of that in heavy residue they have a heck of a time closing the slot, especially if the ground is a little wet.
This past year we bought a JD 1990 and had I known how superior this drill is in planting in heavy residue, we would have dumped the Sunflowers 4 years ago. I planted wheat into 200 bu/ac corn stalks and 80 bu/ac stripped wheat stubble and have near perfect stands. Just amazing. We had given up using the Sunflowers for planting wheat into heavy, stripped wheat stubble because it just can't cut all of the residue and get the seed at the right depth.
Obviously, these are just my observations and opinions from out in NW Kansas.
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Sunflower Drill No-tilling into Corn Stalks
