Last spring, 9-year-old Luke Auer of Broadview, Montana, decided to make a little money raising sweet corn.
To make planting easier, he, his dad, Mitch, and grandfather, Les, rigged up a 3-point-mounted, 1-row, ride-on corn planter using parts they salvaged from an old Deere 7100 corn planter. They pulled it behind their New Holland 100-hp loader tractor.
They removed one of the row units from the planter and stripped away the metering drive and seed box, leaving the disc openers, gauge wheels, and closing wheels intact. Then they used box tubing to build a 3-point mounting bracket and welded it to the front end of the row unit. They mounted a seat and seat belt off a utility tractor in place of the seed box, and installed a funnel attached to a seed tube in front of the seat and just above the disc openers.
“It was a fun project,” says Mitch. “We built it because we farm only with big equipment and don’t own a corn planter anymore. Luke used the unit to plant several batches of sweet corn over a three- to four-week period. He planted 200 to 400 seeds each time and dropped 50 seeds per row.”
Reprinted with permission from FARM SHOW Magazine, www.FarmShow.com.
