School me on Grain Drills

I have planted a lot of greenfields in my 37 years. Mostly ganging the ground, sewing seed, then covering. PIA but all did fine. I started two seasons ago trying some T&M. Very Successful and time saving and honestly could not tell the difference side by side with some ganged up. However I have 160 acres(about 8-10ac for food plots) I live on, along with a few leases that I want to try to up my game on the plots.

I see you can find drills and "no till" drills. I also notice the "no till" models are considerably higher$$ than the "drill" models. What is the difference, just the coulters? Could a regular drill, plant say an area that had been chemically killed and burned off? Or are the openers just not made to bust ground? I have never used a drill or really ever seen one up close. Heck I'd love to have a great plains or similar, but I'm not sure I'd ever be ready to jump on that financially.

Again, I'm pretty ignorant to this piece of equipment so thanks for the help.

I looked into them too. Very high dollar for no till but probably worth it. Looked at a 3 pt 6 footer with the small seed hopper. Sure would speed everything up. I suppose you would have to spray round up prior to planting. Cost versus time. Probably waste less seed to. Lots of used ones for low money but there are wide. This should be an interesting thread.

Drills need softer ground. No-till is worth the extra cost. We use both. No-till can save time. Plus you can fill and go.

For a convential drill to do a good job seeding some discing will need to be done first. No till drills are also built heavier and will hold up better. If buying used be aware that if blades, boots and other parts need replaced you can spend a lot of money and time getting a drill in field ready condition. In my opinion John Deere notill drills are the best. They don’t disturb the soil as much as some of the other brands and are heavy built and will penetrate the ground in tough conditions.

IMHO unless you have a LOT of food plots to plant I don't see how you can justify buying a grain drill. It is still hard to beat a disc and broadcast for me.

depends what you're planting. It just takes so much more seed to broadcast. Good seed corn can run 250+ a bag. Cow peas can be 50+ and soybeans (unless getting some bin runs) will cost 50+. It doesn't take long to be in an extra $500 or more annually. And that is not counting the extra fuel costs to break the ground 2 times a year.

I have a no-till drill and I HATE food plots planted with it. They look shitty to me because there are these awesome little 7.5” rows of green stubble eaten down to ground level, with nothing in the middle until the next green row. The deer eat the young green growth LONG before it can crown over and fill in between the rows. The effect is that the fields have little green lines where the seed is planted and nothing in between the lines.

Personally I like the randomness of broadcasting food plots. The green carpet look let’s you hunt much later.

Cant you cross cross the field?

what about a nurse crop?

I suppose, but no till coulters tear up the ground pretty well so by cross hatching your runs you are substantially disturbing the seeds you just rolled in on other passes. If I adjust the planting position to keep the coulters out of the ground more the seed openers aren’t as consistent rolling along the ground which affects the furrow.

Like what, in the winter time? I’ve put rye grass in with fertilizer and done that, but I don’t think deer eat much rye grass and the fancy little mowed down rows of wheat, oats and clover don’t make me particularly happy. I just like the seed more randomized for green fields I’m hunting over.

I know they're expensive, but if I was going to drop $25K, I'd get a Great Plains brand.

I don't disagree. I prefer broadcasting my wheat and oats too. I was thinking summer and saving beans or peas before they eat them down. Though I did a fall broadcast of sunflower and turnips with my oats this year and I think it turned out ok.

On some experimental plots we planted strips of rye, wheat, and oats. the deer ate in order the oats then rye and finally the wheat. Since then I only use wheat when I am trying to keep my costs low.

The problem with buying a grain drill is that wheat is just so cheap. If you're going to plant with a drill, you need to be doing "better" crops like radishes, brassicas, and warm season stuff like beans and corn. If you're just going to plant wheat and oats, just buy more seed and skip the drill.

I would love to have a drill but for 20 something acres of pasture & a food plot I cant justify the expense.

I have a no till and a regular drill, I also do not like the way the drill plants perfectly straight rows for winter plots it seems like the deer keep them eaten down and they do not crown out until after deer season, what I have started to do is i broadcast rye out on all the plots first then I run the not till over them to plant everything else. The packer on the back of the no till presses everything in the ground and the plots look great. Its one more step but it is worth the effort in my opinion.

I don't use a real drill with row spacing for a food plot mix because I also don't like the little rows. I prefer to broadcast and like the green carpet look as well. I have drilled into a clover plot and had good results but the drill gets used to plant things like peas and beans, etc. Not a food plot mix.



I have seen these other planting attachments that are not really drills they are truly seeders and they appear to do pretty well.

What I am talking about is something like those Brillion Seeders that have 2 rows of packers and they meter the seed down in between the packers. If anyone has ever used one of those chime in about it. I know there are many small versions on the market people like Woods make and sell as food plot seeders but I don't have much experience with small stuff like that. I don't do 5-6 foot anything. Brillion makes some big ones on transport wheels and I have contemplated getting one.

Seems like rental is the best unless you have a whole lot. I don’t have much so I rent

Buy a Firminator.

The Brillion cultipacker style works well on fields that have been sprayed way ahead and are in SANDY SOIL. If you walk in the field and don't make a footprint, that type machine will NOT plant, it'll just spread. The heavy clay soil on our lease renders them useless IMHO.

The best thing I've seen for weight/cost ratio would be a Kasco EcoDrill. It has the same limitations as the above mentioned Deere No Till drills in that it has openers spaced well apart. We tried Throw and Mow on the club I'm in and it nearly got me excommunicated. I thought it worked well myself, but the Peanut Gallery didn't like the looks of all the dead material still standing in the plots.

Thanks Robert. Mine's usually footprint soft to fine powder depending on how many times I go over it. I can turn it under in a couple hours so we turn it under several times to kill the weeds. The planting is a different story on a little 3 point hopper. Takes a full day or more. I've got too much area to deal with bags I'm either going to get a buggy spreader or about a 12ft Brillion like this. The Brillion would still require bags to load the hopper but maybe it would cut down on at least some of the work.

Just get a Great Plains 10’ no till and be done with it

Yep, if you are serious about it this is the way to go. We went thru this decision this spring and weren't quite ready to make the investment in a grain drill. So we settled somewhere in between and got a Woods PSS84. While it's definitely no grain drill, we have been really pleased with it having used it on summer plots and fall plots now. We will likely end up with a great plains drill at some point, at least that's the plan, but for now, the woods servers our purpose well.

Nice!

Get a nice heavy Brillion cultipacker (one that folds to a narrow enough width for all your roads would be the ticket), and just rent a buggy from whoever you buy seed and fertilizer from each year. Roundup everything 4-6 weeks ahead of planting and you'd have it whipped. Good luck and let us know what you do and how it works.

Look up RDH Outdoors or Biggs Farm Equipment and check out the stuff they sell. They buy large drills/planters and cut them down to food plot size. I bought a 6’ Great Plains drill and a JD 2 row no till planter from RDH. Both of mine have the fertilizer hopper so I can put out seed AND fertilizer at the same time. The GP drill plants on 6” centers and will plant over sprayed ground as long as it’s not powder dry and hard (it’s not a no till). It cut down my planting time tremendously as I only need one tractor to plant, fertilize, and cover. Both of these guys do top notch work as well. I am VERY happy with both the implements that I bought. They were well below the cost of buying new too.