Finger closing wheels verse original rubber on planter

I think I will make a change for next spring. Factory rubber John Deere 7000/Kinze 2000 seem to pack fine (clay) soils from the top down. Then add the fact that places seemed to be wet, so now you are packing wet clay type soils. Sometimes the closing wheels push a wet chunk in the trench. Sort of hard on corn emergence. Finger wheels close the seed trench from below and place loose soil on top. So, I am interested in seeking input from Yesterdays Tractor readers. I do somewhat know the Martin system with the fingers either on both sides or one side with the original closing wheel on the other. I do not know the benefits of one over the other although. I am in a 100% no-till situation. My corn stands have been good, but looking for a more uniform emergence no skips due to emergence problems. My son likes the Dawn curve tine closing wheel. Thanks for your ideas.

The Dawn finger closing wheels work well. DO NOT use the double wheel setup in pure no-till!!! They will dig a trench in some soils. I have had better results just using Dawn finger closing wheels on one side and the factory wheel on the other. The factory wheel acts more as a depth gauge wheel than a closing wheel. You run much lower closing wheel spring tension too. I would also recommend the Dawn drag chains too. They will smooth the closed seed trench out and it will not wash as bad when your planting on steeper ground. The best chains are square type of links that have a twist in each link. These stay on the ground and drag evenly. The cheaper chains will drag and dump. So you end up with mounds and divots rather than a smooth seed trench cover.

The curved tine closing wheels will have issues in your clay soils IF the ground is damp. The tine wheels will snow ball in the wet clay ground.

Another thing that may help you is using CIH depth wheels on your JD/Kinze planting units. They have a smaller diameter right against the opener disk. This tends to leave the ground right at the seed trench "V" looser. This makes the closing system have less compacted side walls to close. In no-till this helps in worked ground it can cause issues. More loose ground than you need at the seed trench.

We have yetter spike closing wheels (2) and the dawn twisted chain drag chains. Trash wheels and 1" coulters up ftont. But we are replanting after the 10" rain.

I run a Martin spike wheel on one side and a Deere cast wheel on the other. I feel the cast wheel acts as a depth control for the spike wheel. The spike side punches or breaks up the side wall. Been using this setup for 12 years in both corn and soybeans. Tom

I use one martin spiked, and one Deere rubber, with a Martin drag chain. We have a Deere 7200 with precision meters. We no-till plant corn into alfalfa, soybean, wheat, and corn (with and without full stalk cover). The system seems to work, and seems to be more forgiving in marginal conditions like this year.

We've used this system 7 or 8 years. Prior to that (this is our 32nd year of no-till) we just used the two deere rubber wheels. I think we get a better job of closing with the current setup.

There seems to be a lot of notched plastic wheels on the market now. Anyone have experience with them??

Also, I've seen one Martin spike, and one Schlagel. Experience there?

We use a dawn curve tine on one side and factory rubber with great results. On our smaller planter we ran all dawns when we doubled our planter size I just threw the dawns on one side because that's all I had when it was time to run. Thought about getting more to do them all the next year but like results we got with just one so never ordered anymore and it's been like that for around 5 years. If you do go with spikes you will like the results a lot better if you run drag chains

Cant say what set up works best but we have one steel spike and one factory per row on the 7200 deere, The Kinzie corn planter has both metal per row and the Kenzie bean splitter has one factory and one plastic spike per row. All do a fine job. The plastic ones were added last year to splitter so it never got to see any wet ground but looks like it will this year