In West Tennessee, we are blessed with the ability to grow some really rank cover crops. The challenge is learning how to manage them without sacrificing crop production (or our sanity). The first year, I tried to plant green with row cleaners, no-till coulters, and drag chains and I could have written a book on how to cuss a planter.

Vetch and other creeping legumes show no mercy, and with an entire crop on the line, we knew we had to get serious about our planter. We use a John Deere 1770 NT (16 row, 30 inch) for planting corn. Since we started planting green in 2022, we have removed the row cleaners, no-till coulters, and drag chains. We kept the Precision Planting vDrives, Keetons, and Copperhead closing wheels the same, but exchanged our standard disc openers for Prescription Tillage Technology STP Disc Openers and added Precision Planting DeltaForce.

We use a Kinze 3700 (24 row, 20 inch) for planting soybeans. It is a bare bones Kinze planter with factory spring downforce and mechanical chain drives. We removed the row cleaners and no-till coulters from this planter too. Just this year, we exchanged the old Yetter poly twister closing wheels for Schaffert zipper closing wheels. We'll also be experimenting with a couple 4 Link Closers from Schaffert Manufacturing.

Lastly, we share a little about using our I & J roller crimper (30 ft) to roll and crimp the cover crop after planting green.

We know there is more to learn, but we are really excited about the updates we have made and looking forward to seeing the results of these changes! We’ll be following up with more planting videos as soon as we are able to get back in the field.