Choosing an implement to plant with

Doodlebug

Yearling... With promise
This is my first post here. Looks like an awesome site with lots of people that have similar interests to me.

I have about 30 acres by my house that I have plowed and planted and grazed cattle on for years. I had a full size 150HP farm tractor, large drag type tandem disc, large chisel plow, and large drag type drill.

Last year we bought a 330 acre ranch located about 1.25 hours away from the house. My tractor and implements were all too big to haul back and forth and even if I got them to the ranch they wouldn’t make it down the narrow ranch roads.

I sold my large tractor and bought a 73 hp MFWD tractor with cab and loader and today I bought a 7.5‘ offset disc. Basically I am selling off all my large equipment and replacing it with smaller equipment suitable to the 73 HP tractor and that can be hauled back and forth as It will do double duty planting for the cattle at home and food plots at the ranch.

I am searching for a drill or other implement to plant with and there are so many choices my head is spinning. No till is appealing to me but at least initially I am going to be discing as the food plot areas are brush now and we are dozing and raking them and I figure the disc will help level them out and break up any remaining roots.

The 3PT606NT looks nice but is a little narrow and is pretty much unavailable everywhere I checked. Sold out and Covid delays. The Genesis 8 looks nice and I know where one is (new) but I am not familiar with the brand and I am not sure how they call it no till when it doesn’t come with coulters. Another drill I found is VMC and they make an 8’ with a built in cultipacker. It seems really nice as well and they told me 3 weeks out but again I am not familiar with the brand.

The woods and firminator are interesting. I am not familiar with these type things but they don’t appear to be true drills. They basically run a disc on front, drop the seed, and then cultipack over it. This seems like it would work great for small seeds that need to be planted shallow but the bulk of what I will be planting is winter wheat and cereal rye for food plots and haygrazer (sorghum-sudan hybrid) for grazing cattle at my house. All of these are recommended to be planted at around 1” deep. Not sure if the woods or firminator can do that and if they produce nice thick consistent stands like a drill does. There is a 8’ firminator with very low use for sale near me for a good deal.

Any advice you could give would greatly be appreciated. Budget isn’t a huge concern but I don’t want to spend 15k when something half that amount will do the job. At the same time I am more afraid of spending $7500 on something like the firminator and being disappointed in how it works.
 
I went from an ATV with implements to a 100hp tractor and a 6'Firminator. The Firminator works great and easily discs deeply and plants large seeds great. It may just be me, but I've had trouble getting the small seeds to flow at a small rate. I tend to overseed with those. I LOVE my Firminator but if budget is not a concern, I would get a drill. You will be able to plant with very little soil disruption, and planting into another crop (planting into a clover stand for example, would but FAR less disruptive with a drill. I could not justify the cost of a drill at the time.

I also use the Firminator as my disc for things like road maintenance and firebreaks, since I have no stand alone disc.
 
I havent used a firminator, but I do have a Woods Seeder. I plant about 30 or 40 acres of wheat with it a year and it does a very good job with wheat, oats, and rye. It also does a good job planting cereal grains and clover at the same time. It is not a no till drill. But is also does things a no till drill can not do.
 
Thanks. I bought the used 8’ Firminator. I won’t be able to pick it up for a week or so. I think I bought it right so if it doesn’t work well I think I can sell it and buy a drill.
 
Thanks. I bought the used 8’ Firminator. I won’t be able to pick it up for a week or so. I think I bought it right so if it doesn’t work well I think I can sell it and buy a drill.
It's great and it will definitely do the job. I think I may have gotten scared and opened up the seed bin a bit too much! But great implement.
 
Hard to have all the right implements, talked to Steve Bartylla a few years ago and he said unless you can afford all the major implements required, and your planting allows for maneuvering these tools, the Firminator was the best food plot tool you could buy as that is what he uses to do all the contract properties he manages.
 
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I plant quite a few acres with a tiller and a bag spreader. I even broadcast my corn last year with a very good stand . I just don’t see the advantage the firminator offers vs the price.


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Given your tractor size and budget, I would go no-til hands down. The Genesis 8 would be a sweet setup, any RTP dealer can get them (or add) front coulters to them. A Land Pride NT would be a sweet setup as well, nice to have separate seed boxes but I believe the newer RTP Genesis drills have extra options as well now. Good luck!
 
RTP and LP/GP NT are out of stock until fall. I do know a dealer who has a genesis in stock though. I may ultimately end up going that route but I can get this firminator now and plant my spring stuff with it. If it doesn’t work well I can sell it and get a true drill for the fall planting.
 
I plant quite a few acres with a tiller and a bag spreader. I even broadcast my corn last year with a very good stand . I just don’t see the advantage the firminator offers vs the price.


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How many acres? I plan on planting 40-50 per year. At that size seed price per acre, efficiency, etc all become major factors.
 
This is my first post here. Looks like an awesome site with lots of people that have similar interests to me.

I have about 30 acres by my house that I have plowed and planted and grazed cattle on for years. I had a full size 150HP farm tractor, large drag type tandem disc, large chisel plow, and large drag type drill.

Last year we bought a 330 acre ranch located about 1.25 hours away from the house. My tractor and implements were all too big to haul back and forth and even if I got them to the ranch they wouldn’t make it down the narrow ranch roads.

I sold my large tractor and bought a 73 hp MFWD tractor with cab and loader and today I bought a 7.5‘ offset disc. Basically I am selling off all my large equipment and replacing it with smaller equipment suitable to the 73 HP tractor and that can be hauled back and forth as It will do double duty planting for the cattle at home and food plots at the ranch.

I am searching for a drill or other implement to plant with and there are so many choices my head is spinning. No till is appealing to me but at least initially I am going to be discing as the food plot areas are brush now and we are dozing and raking them and I figure the disc will help level them out and break up any remaining roots.

The 3PT606NT looks nice but is a little narrow and is pretty much unavailable everywhere I checked. Sold out and Covid delays. The Genesis 8 looks nice and I know where one is (new) but I am not familiar with the brand and I am not sure how they call it no till when it doesn’t come with coulters. Another drill I found is VMC and they make an 8’ with a built in cultipacker. It seems really nice as well and they told me 3 weeks out but again I am not familiar with the brand.

The woods and firminator are interesting. I am not familiar with these type things but they don’t appear to be true drills. They basically run a disc on front, drop the seed, and then cultipack over it. This seems like it would work great for small seeds that need to be planted shallow but the bulk of what I will be planting is winter wheat and cereal rye for food plots and haygrazer (sorghum-sudan hybrid) for grazing cattle at my house. All of these are recommended to be planted at around 1” deep. Not sure if the woods or firminator can do that and if they produce nice thick consistent stands like a drill does. There is a 8’ firminator with very low use for sale near me for a good deal.

Any advice you could give would greatly be appreciated. Budget isn’t a huge concern but I don’t want to spend 15k when something half that amount will do the job. At the same time I am more afraid of spending $7500 on something like the firminator and being disappointed in how it works.
I dont have the answers but it seems you have asked all the right questions in a thoughtful analysis
I am interested in the responses of others here

bill
 
I plant quite a few acres with a tiller and a bag spreader. I even broadcast my corn last year with a very good stand . I just don’t see the advantage the firminator offers vs the price.


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Time. I dont know about a firminator, but I suspect it is similar to my woods seeder. I can plant an acre in 20 minutes. One pass - unless I need to spray it. And when planting small seeds, the cultipacker greatly increases germination rates. I have planted a lot of ground with a disk and a bag seeder. Go over it once with a sprayer. A couple weeks later, go over it with a disk, then walk it with a hand spreader, then go back over it with a drag. Four times over the same ground with a disk and a bag as opposed to twice with a planter. When you are planting thirty acres, that is a huge difference.

That said, last year I planted using a hand crank bag spreader, a one row covington planter, a three pt tractor mounted spreader, an electric spreader mounted to my sxs, and my woods seeder.

If I had a drill, I would have probably used it some, also.
 
If you have hogs, I would strongly consider a firminator/woods seeder type of implement. One of the good things about a drill is little soil disturbance. That can be a bad thing if you have hogs and need to smooth out some hog root. I also use my woods seeder almost as much for trail maintenance as planting - where a drill would be absolutely useless.
 
If you have hogs, I would strongly consider a firminator/woods seeder type of implement. One of the good things about a drill is little soil disturbance. That can be a bad thing if you have hogs and need to smooth out some hog root. I also use my woods seeder almost as much for trail maintenance as planting - where a drill would be absolutely useless.
Great point that I failed to consider. We are over run with hogs. We have five feeders set up and it is not uncommon to see a half dozen at every feeder every night. We shoot every one we can including going after them at night with thermals but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.
 
Great point that I failed to consider. We are over run with hogs. We have five feeders set up and it is not uncommon to see a half dozen at every feeder every night. We shoot every one we can including going after them at night with thermals but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

A drill is useless in uneven, rough ground. If I get to a food plot, and it is badly rooted, I disconnect the drive gear on my Woods Seeder and work it over with the disk, roller, and cultipacker without seeding just to help smooth out the seed bed. Then I engage the drive gear and plant on the next pass. If it is just scattered rooting, I just hit it while I am seeding and it will smooth it out pretty good on that one pass.
 
Swampcat - Which Woods unit do you have?
 
We don't have hogs....yet...fingers crossed....

Most of my planting is now done with a broadcast spreader followed by a culitpacker. I have a small Kasco 4' no-till drill. It is great for large seeds that can't be broadcast without tillage like soybeans an corn, but I simply don't plant those crops these days. For crops that surface broadcast well, I find the 3-pt broadcast spreader followed by a cultipacker much quicker. It is 2 passes vs a single pass, but passes with a broadcast spreader are fast and much farther apart. A 10' culitpacker makes for fewer and faster passes than with my Kasco. I still need a pass with a sprayer. There are times depending on soil conditions when I till or disc very shallow, but this doesn't happen often.

All in one tools can be problematic, but woods and firminator are some of the better ones out there.

Thanks,

jack
 
A drill is useless in uneven, rough ground. If I get to a food plot, and it is badly rooted, I disconnect the drive gear on my Woods Seeder and work it over with the disk, roller, and cultipacker without seeding just to help smooth out the seed bed. Then I engage the drive gear and plant on the next pass. If it is just scattered rooting, I just hit it while I am seeding and it will smooth it out pretty good on that one pass.
I think the firminator works almost identically to your woods. In scenarios like this where you work the ground first before making the planting pass how do you set the discs on the planting pass? Perfectly straight or a slight angle to them. At least initially I will be working all the ground with this before I plant. I am curious how I should set the discs on the planting pass.

IMG_0123.jpeg
 
I disced one of the fields by my house this weekend and this is what it looks like as an example. IMG_0124.jpeg
 
Straighten discs before planting. This breaks up the clumps so you're ready for the cultipacker.
 
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