Steve Bartylla
5 year old buck +
As several asked when I mentioned the Firminator a couple months back, here's my review. The reason for the delay is that I wanted to have a chance to really put it through its paces, before reporting on it, both in fairness to the product and to those reading this review. Just keep in mind that I don't do product reviews. So, this may be a bit disjointed.
Cons:
It is a bit jerky when dragging it to and from the planting sites. If you go flying down trails towing it at 25 mph, you're going to get jerked around. When towing a 800+ lbs piece of equipment, that should be expected. Honestly, I'm just trying to come up with some cons. I don't have many and it seems like a review should have some cons.
This next one also should be expected. You aren't pulling this thing with a toy ATV. Again, this is 800+ lbs and you can set it so the discs are biting hard. That takes some power to pull when discing. I used a 750, but I believe anything over a 450 would work, maybe even a 400. The catch isn't having the horse power. I found it's really more getting the traction to pull it. Discing uphill on a steep grade in damp conditions isn't going to work very well, but would anyone expect it too?
Finally, it takes some playing around with all the settings to find the sweet spots for turning and packing dirt, in specific conditions. I'll be listing all the adjustments as a strength, as they truly are. Still, the first time I used it, it took about 10-15 mins to get it dialed into the sweet spot. Once I got a feel for it, I cut that down to less than 5 mins on each new area.
Pros:
This is a serious piece of equipment. Frankly, I never would have believed I'd write or say something like this, but I found it to actually work better than a small tractor and traditional implement combo. No doubt you are having problems believing that, as I sure would have myself. The series of images below show what I mean. Outside of spraying the thick 3-4' tall cereal rye, I exclusively used the Firminator to transform that plot into a thriving Red Zone (Antler King's soybean, sunflower and pea blend) plot. The last pics are about 4 weeks after planting. I didn't mow, rake or anything more than use the Firminator to turn the dirt. If anyone has ever tried doing that with a small tractor and 10' disc or, God help them, another ATV implement, you know how impressive that is. In fact, I purposefully did the plot in the pics below this way to see if it could accomplish that feat. I didn't expect it to succeed, but the seed bed was created and seeded in 4 total passes, including 1 for seeding and packing.
The potential adjustments are many and provide great flexibility. The threaded adjustment shaft allows for one to easily transfer weight between the cultipacker and discs. So, you can disc exclusively, pack exclusively or hit nearly any balance of doing both at the same time one could want, all just by adjusting the shaft. You can even cheat and set the transport tire height to be sure you don't disc deeper than one wants to. There are 3 different connection point for that shaft that will allow even further extremes in the adjustment between the disc and cultipacker. I'll be honest. I left it set on the middle and saw no need to hit the extremes, but they're there if needed.
There are 3 aggression settings for the row of farm grade discs. A 5 year old can do it near effortlessly, simply by pulling the pins, surprisingly easily shifting the discs and reinserting the pin.
The seed meter only releases seed when it is engaged, allowing one to keep the opening as is during trips between plots (not a world changer, but nice) and it's very easy to adjust down to an 1/8th of an inch and can even be dialed in further.
The opening for the seed dispenser allowed me to plant small seeds, such as clover and brassicas, as well as oats, cereal rye and even a combo of switch, big blue and indian grass, with using the cat littler trick to get the seeds to dispense (the unit I have doesn't have the optional seed agitator, but they do offer it as an optional accessory, but I don't feel it's required). That may not sound like a big deal, but a pet peeve of mine are seeders that don't open up enough to allow 100-200 lbs per acre of large seed to be spread in 1 pass. This does.
I even used it as a poor man's no till drill. By setting the discs straight and sinking them about an inch down, I planted several bean plots by simply spraying and running the Firminator over it, creating grooves in the soil, dropping seed and cultipacking, in one pass. No, this is NOT a disc, seed and pack in 1 pass food plot implement for creating traditional food plots, and they'll be the first to tell you. On traditional plots, one will need to make 1-3 passes to break the soil (the number dependent on ground/weed conditions....I did most in 2 passes to create an acceptable seed bed) and 1 to plant & give it the final cultipacking (the last soil breaking pass, you want to be cultipacking as well, to create the firmer seed bed, before seeding small seeds). Still, it does work as a poor man's no-till in one pass. No. it is not as good as a true no-till, but it worked acceptably well for me. Just realize that some seeds won't be dropped in the disc grooves and sealed with the cultipacker.. I just upped the seed rate to 125% of what I would have used with a true no-till.
Long and short of it, they are sponsoring my Grow `em Big show and gave me their biggest tractor and ATV versions to use this summer. When they ask for them back at the end of the year, I'll be buying both, myself. The ATV implement is flat out the best I've ever used.....not even close.
Cons:
It is a bit jerky when dragging it to and from the planting sites. If you go flying down trails towing it at 25 mph, you're going to get jerked around. When towing a 800+ lbs piece of equipment, that should be expected. Honestly, I'm just trying to come up with some cons. I don't have many and it seems like a review should have some cons.
This next one also should be expected. You aren't pulling this thing with a toy ATV. Again, this is 800+ lbs and you can set it so the discs are biting hard. That takes some power to pull when discing. I used a 750, but I believe anything over a 450 would work, maybe even a 400. The catch isn't having the horse power. I found it's really more getting the traction to pull it. Discing uphill on a steep grade in damp conditions isn't going to work very well, but would anyone expect it too?
Finally, it takes some playing around with all the settings to find the sweet spots for turning and packing dirt, in specific conditions. I'll be listing all the adjustments as a strength, as they truly are. Still, the first time I used it, it took about 10-15 mins to get it dialed into the sweet spot. Once I got a feel for it, I cut that down to less than 5 mins on each new area.
Pros:
This is a serious piece of equipment. Frankly, I never would have believed I'd write or say something like this, but I found it to actually work better than a small tractor and traditional implement combo. No doubt you are having problems believing that, as I sure would have myself. The series of images below show what I mean. Outside of spraying the thick 3-4' tall cereal rye, I exclusively used the Firminator to transform that plot into a thriving Red Zone (Antler King's soybean, sunflower and pea blend) plot. The last pics are about 4 weeks after planting. I didn't mow, rake or anything more than use the Firminator to turn the dirt. If anyone has ever tried doing that with a small tractor and 10' disc or, God help them, another ATV implement, you know how impressive that is. In fact, I purposefully did the plot in the pics below this way to see if it could accomplish that feat. I didn't expect it to succeed, but the seed bed was created and seeded in 4 total passes, including 1 for seeding and packing.
The potential adjustments are many and provide great flexibility. The threaded adjustment shaft allows for one to easily transfer weight between the cultipacker and discs. So, you can disc exclusively, pack exclusively or hit nearly any balance of doing both at the same time one could want, all just by adjusting the shaft. You can even cheat and set the transport tire height to be sure you don't disc deeper than one wants to. There are 3 different connection point for that shaft that will allow even further extremes in the adjustment between the disc and cultipacker. I'll be honest. I left it set on the middle and saw no need to hit the extremes, but they're there if needed.
There are 3 aggression settings for the row of farm grade discs. A 5 year old can do it near effortlessly, simply by pulling the pins, surprisingly easily shifting the discs and reinserting the pin.
The seed meter only releases seed when it is engaged, allowing one to keep the opening as is during trips between plots (not a world changer, but nice) and it's very easy to adjust down to an 1/8th of an inch and can even be dialed in further.
The opening for the seed dispenser allowed me to plant small seeds, such as clover and brassicas, as well as oats, cereal rye and even a combo of switch, big blue and indian grass, with using the cat littler trick to get the seeds to dispense (the unit I have doesn't have the optional seed agitator, but they do offer it as an optional accessory, but I don't feel it's required). That may not sound like a big deal, but a pet peeve of mine are seeders that don't open up enough to allow 100-200 lbs per acre of large seed to be spread in 1 pass. This does.
I even used it as a poor man's no till drill. By setting the discs straight and sinking them about an inch down, I planted several bean plots by simply spraying and running the Firminator over it, creating grooves in the soil, dropping seed and cultipacking, in one pass. No, this is NOT a disc, seed and pack in 1 pass food plot implement for creating traditional food plots, and they'll be the first to tell you. On traditional plots, one will need to make 1-3 passes to break the soil (the number dependent on ground/weed conditions....I did most in 2 passes to create an acceptable seed bed) and 1 to plant & give it the final cultipacking (the last soil breaking pass, you want to be cultipacking as well, to create the firmer seed bed, before seeding small seeds). Still, it does work as a poor man's no-till in one pass. No. it is not as good as a true no-till, but it worked acceptably well for me. Just realize that some seeds won't be dropped in the disc grooves and sealed with the cultipacker.. I just upped the seed rate to 125% of what I would have used with a true no-till.
Long and short of it, they are sponsoring my Grow `em Big show and gave me their biggest tractor and ATV versions to use this summer. When they ask for them back at the end of the year, I'll be buying both, myself. The ATV implement is flat out the best I've ever used.....not even close.
