Genesis Drill first impressions

[River-X]

I got a chance to hook up and try out the new drill yesterday afternoon. I took it over to a farm where we had taken out a fence line between two fields, and to prevent washout, I seeded in a waterway until the old fenceline ground settles. The Genesis worked real good.
I know these things are cost prohibitive for a lot of food plotters but we have over 5000 acres of cash crop lands that we farm so it will have other uses around here too. My brother-in-laws also do some excavating business during summer and winter while the crops are growing. The drill will come in handy for that application as well.

Impressions:
The drill was very easy to hook up and get leveled out to a good ground contact point.
The seed size setting is very simple and adjusting the planting rate is extremely simple with the clutch system they have now compared to the old gear/size models.
Calibration is easy and quick also. And I will add, the suggested settings in the book and on the site are pretty spot on. I will keep a notebook like everybody says, and eventually there wont be to many times when a guy will even need to calibrate unless its a straight soybean mix where seeds change size most years.
We tried the drill out over some excavated fence line with some rocks still in there, some of which were just smaller than a basketball. There were also some pieces of old box elder knuckles and crap. The drill rode right over with no problems. I kept the speed at a modest 2 MPH because it is brand new and Im not trying to beat the snot out of it. Rolled right over the old wood stuff, pulled up one rock, but rolled right over with no falter.

All in all, a very good piece of equipment on its maiden voyage. But like with all things, time will tell. FYI, if its not, Im not going to sugar coat it. It will get sent down the road and replaced with something that can handle what we throw at it. Crap equipment doesn’t sit around here too long. What I’m saying is, if I find some weak points, you will hear about it, if it turns out to be a turd, you will hear about it.
So far…So good.
I will be putting some acres on it this week, so I should have more to add by Thursday I would think.

 

[Wind Gypsy]

Lookin forward to hearing more.

That’s some outfit for may in WI [edit: upon closer look, it’s a cutoff and not shirtless with overalls]

 

[River-X]

Day 2 with the drill:

Spent the morning hours mowing lawns for my mom and the long driveway edge over at the hunting farm.

My new neighbors are gearing up to bring their horses in from out of state. They asked if I could plant some horse pasture mix grass blend in an area that used to be scrub brush and cedars with some boxelders mixed in and of course, buckthorn. When the neighbor bought the place in the fall he brush hogged the area and cut the stumps down about and inch or two proud of the dirt line. This is the area they wanted me to plant so I said “hell yeah, I will give it a shot”
So I planted about 3-4 acres of a grass mix that includes perennial rye grass, brome, orchard, Timothy, and Kentucky blue. Set the seed size to ( 1 ) and the clutch to ( 3.5 ) and proceeded to plant about 25 lbs/acre. It worked GREAT! I was drilling at a speed of 2.5 MPH and when I would come up to a stump it would ride over it as nice as could be. Granted, top speed for planting is max 7.5 so i am well under that but I really dont want to break it the first few times I use it. Seed depth was 1/4” and consistent. No seed lying on top of the ground.

Now, the hydraulic top link I put on the tractor 3 days ago somehow managed to break off one of my rear remotes. I dont know if the lines didnt have enough slack in them or what the heck, but I sheared off the hub that the pioneer end plugs into. It didnt slow me down any, I just switched them over to the other remote but it gave my new drill cover a beautiful Hytran shine. So I will be power washing the rear of the tractor for a nice Sunday morning.

Weather has been mid 80 -90 all week here. It’s been kinda crazy seeing as we were freezing our dumplings off while turkey hunting in the morning two weeks ago.
More to come, I will be starting my plots and summer blends on Monday. Honey do stuff tomorrow after tractor degreasing.

 

[River-X]

This is what I no tilled into today. Look carefully, that is wood lying on the ground, not dried grass. There were stumps in there too, most about 4-5 inches in diameter with a few that were closer to 8 or 9. He had them cut down pretty good, but some were pretty proud.

 

[TreeDaddy]

Lookin forward to hearing more.

That’s some outfit for may in WI [edit: upon closer look, it’s a cutoff and not shirtless with overalls]View attachment 43010

All my T shirts are "cut offs"

Timeless east texas motif

bill

 

[Jonathan]

I will echo River-X's comments, I just started using my Genesis 10 and have planted into unharvested corn, sorghum and sunflower fields that were mowed and burned this spring with no issues.

 

[Bassattackr]

@Jonathan - That field is post burn ? Looks like it had a pass with some sort of tillage implement first.

I'd be curious to hear anyone's impressions of a 3 pt Genesis 3, and how they drill compared to the larger models.

 

[Diesel5610]

Thanks for the reviews. Looking good so far.

 

[IkemanTx]

Lookin forward to hearing more.

That’s some outfit for may in WI [edit: upon closer look, it’s a cutoff and not shirtless with overalls]View attachment 43010

Oh, letterkenny….. that show warms my heart.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jonathan]

@Jonathan - That field is post burn ? Looks like it had a pass with some sort of tillage implement first.

I'd be curious to hear anyone's impressions of a 3 pt Genesis 3, and how they drill compared to the larger models.

I mowed the standing crop in early March with my moco and burned the windrows. Last week we ditched 30" ditches in it prior to planting for irrigation flow.

 

[MadMadHoosier]

I will echo River-X's comments, I just started using my Genesis 10 and have planted into unharvested corn, sorghum and sunflower fields that were mowed and burned this spring with no issues.

I'll bet that Gen10 is a beast! DId you till or disc some before planting? Wish my recently planted 18 acres (with Gen5) looked as good as your fields, but I'm trying to avoid spraying, and with my limited time at the farm I'm taking some shortcuts. Did a quick bush hog and no-tilled into the residue. Several fields have a mix of sunflower and corn, a few little ones have soybeans, and some bottom land has Japanese millet. The bottoms were still a little moist, but with more rain in the forecast I planted anyway. I know there will be significant weeds, but I'm OK with that this year for food plots.

 

[River-X]

Day 3 using the drill:

Started out by taking a quick look at the plots from last year behind the house. The seed I used last year gave me a nice residual crop of Yellow Rocket as a “bonus” i see. So much for “No weed seed” in there. I commenced to giving those plots a whoopin with a stout shot of Gly. The areas in these pictures around the plots is currently Timothy grass and that is where the Summer Release blend is going. For last years plots I will putting in a custom mix of forage soybeans, safflower seed, flax, peas. I know there is no grasses in that blend but I want to keep a small area as sort of a control. To be able to see different results and / or changes.
I even found a late shed antler laying in the plot while spraying. Can’t believe the boys missed this one.

 

[River-X]

So after spraying, I decided to wait until today to plant those areas. Instead, I went out with the drill to the ”new” 10 acres along side our prairie. When we bought the land from the neighbor in 2021, it was in the midst of summer and had a crop of soybeans on it. This land has been No-Till farmed for as long as I have been in this area, 20 plus years. So after the farmer took their soybeans off, which was quite late last year, I had a friend drill in some cereal Rye as my first cover crop. The Rye did not come up in the fall seeing as it was too late and too cold to get much of a start. But it did come up in the spring and is just shorter than most Rye in the area.
I put in 16’ of “border” between me and the neighbors using a strait planting of sunflowers. My wife will like that too. Then I went around the inside of that with an 8’ planting of Crimson clover, White / Ladino clover, Chicory, and Alfalfa. This will serve as our walking path and our ATV access to the other side of the field.
More to come on how I am going to lay out the center area of that field. But here I am drilling into that short Rye. Notice the pretty good thatch and ground cover left from the previous bean crop and even the corn crop from 2020.
The drill cut through and planted the seed at the correct depth through the thatch. I do not have the small seed box option or the front coulter option. The drill planted the very fine clover/alfalfa/chicory blend great and the Sunflowers with no problems. So far, the claim of being able to plant any size seed with it has held true. Granted, we will wait to see how this comes up and what kind of stands I see before I will sing any praises. But as of now, it has been putting the seed into the ground and the correct depth, and handled small to large with no issues.

 

[Brian662]

What is your soil type in that area River-X?

 

[River-X]

Brian662,
Most of our soil in this area leans towards a “heavier” sandy loam. I describe it that way because there is some sand in it but it is pretty damn good soil that retains moisture but unless your on the edge of a marsh, it usually doesn’t set up too hard. Nothing like the clay based soils down south. We are right on the edge of what many around here call “The Arlington Prairie”. If you were to google that in Wisconsin it would likely come up as a soils topic of some sort. Many companies like Pioneer seed, Monsanto, NK, and other ag companies have research stations in the Arlington area due to its outstanding soil quality.

 

[River-X]

Day 4:
Not a whole lot to add to the review really. I did plant an acre and a half Summer Blend for my buddy Pete. The drill fed the 9 variety seed of different sizes very well and pretty accurately as far as pounds per acre. That was planted into his existing food plot area that he had a mixture of brassicas and chicory and a little bit of crimson clover in. The deer cleaned it out by spring and it was just about bare dirt.
The second thing at his place that we planted was a nice patch of Sunflowers down in an old prairie that he has had for almost 20 years now and it needs to be freshened up. He said that last time he burned it was 2 years ago so it still had some good thatch on it and the majority of it is over 24 inches tall. Thick in a few spots, a bit thinner in others. The drill was able to push through the standing vegetation, new growth, and old thatch with no issues. We planted the sunflowers down 1.5 inches and there was good moisture in the soil so I have high hopes that should turn out very well.
I should be able to get after a bunch of my plot ground tomorrow so hopefully I can add to the review.
Had one small issue today after drilling in one of Pete’s areas, I should have lifted up the drill but thought the slight curve in the plot could be handled if I went slow enough. But I think it was just a tad too tight. Anyways, there is a large spring that the seed tube goes down through and the spring sits on a cast piece in a formed area that holds it in place. The side strain must have pulled the bottom of the spring to the left and dislodged it near the bottom.
It was easy to tell something wasn‘t right because it would donkey pile a little right in front of the disk because the friction of the spring rubbing on the disk made it turn a lot less freely than the others. Took a few minutes and got the spring shifted back to its place and all is well. Pretty durable so far. Hope it remains that way.
If you guys have any questions, throw them out there and I will do what I can to answer them.

This is what I was planting into at Pete’s in the old prairie. Just for the sake of seeing the different types of thatch it is being used on.

 

[jsasker007]

Thanks for the review. Looks like a quality implement.

 

[Rit]

It is a quality machine no doubt. But you will struggle if you want to plant a brassica mix at less than 9 lbs an acre. You won’t notice small seed issues when planting clover or Alfalfa because the seeding rates are so high in a monoculture. I can’t get the brassicas to plant at less than 9.5ish lbs per acre. I no longer plant brassicas because they just don’t get consumed. Even when I change the gearbox-ratio to almost 0 and gate opening as small as my largest brassica seed I cannot get the lbs per acre down under 9 without adding something to the mix. Ideally I’d like to to plant at 5-6 max. But I always plant 10-15 way mixes now and it has no issues putting all those seeds where I need them. Everything about the drill is good. I don’t regret buying a genesis especially with the price I paid. It was a smoking deal.

I wanted the front cutters but the dealer told me I wouldn’t need them. He was right and saved me some bucks. I plant into heavy thatch even left over sorghum stalks into heavy clay with no issues. The theory other drills like GP or LP are far superior just isn’t true. They may have been around longer or have some features that are better but the gap isn’t quite what the fanboys would have you believe. It’s more of a Chevy/Ford/Dodge thing.

 

[River-X]

Rit,
Is your Genesis the style with the swap out gears or the clutch system? From what you wrote it sounds like the gear model.

 

[Rit]

Rit,
Is your Genesis the style with the swap out gears or the clutch system? From what you wrote it sounds like the gear model.

I didn’t know there were different options. But yes I would say gear box. On the front right of the drill as you are facing the front of it there are two knobs that you loosen then a third knob on the front that moves the plate left to right on a scale that goes from 1 to 11 I believe. It works just fine for me as I plant mixes over straight brassicas. Planted the same summer soil builder mix 2 years running. Looked at my notes from last year took 5 minutes to calibrate and was spot on from my previous settings.