yoderjac
5 year old buck +
Mine is a 4' model. I'm sure the 6' is heavier.
Kasco Versa Drill - First Try - Transferred from QDMA Forums
- Thread starter yoderjac
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Mine is a 4' model. I'm sure the 6' is heavier.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I believe the mud scrapers are an option. If your unit does not have the mud scrapers you may not have the same clogging issues as me.
Thanks,
Jack
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
When I got to the farm today, it was raining, so instead of field work, I decided to work on the seed drill. I added one more seed tube like the others and have one more to go. I also made the first seed bin divider:
I cut a piece of sheet metal with shears according to the template. I inserted it into the bin. I'm using magnets to hold it in place. It seemed to work well, so I plan to make more.
Thanks,
Jack
I cut a piece of sheet metal with shears according to the template. I inserted it into the bin. I'm using magnets to hold it in place. It seemed to work well, so I plan to make more.
Thanks,
Jack
Freeborn
5 year old buck +
That looks great Jack, nice improvement. I'll need to give that a try.When I got to the farm today, it was raining, so instead of field work, I decided to work on the seed drill. I added one more seed tube like the others and have one more to go. I also made the first seed bin divider:
I cut a piece of sheet metal with shears according to the template. I inserted it into the bin. I'm using magnets to hold it in place. It seemed to work well, so I plan to make more.
Thanks,
Jack
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I'm not sure how often I'll really want to partition the bin, but it looks like this approach will work pretty well if you have a need for it. It is easy to position and remove them. Other than that last seed tube I still need to do, the only other thing I plan to do is to reverse the lid. It is setup so that the lit pivots toward the tractor. This makes loading seed from the rear easy, but I have to stop and get out of the tractor to monitor seed flow. By reversing the lid (and maybe mounting a small mirror on it if needed, I should be able to look out the rear window of the tractor and see the seed level.
Thanks,
Jack
I bought the 6' model last year and planted about 20 acres from corn, soybeans to winter mixes. Everything I have planted has done great. I would not hesitate to recommend the purchase of one for someone wanted to do no till food plots. Expensive purchase but still way cheaper than other models.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
Maybe the Eco Drill is better and, for that matter, maybe they have improved the design of the versa-drill. But based on my experience with mine, I would not recommend buying a new one given the price, but we all have different budgets. Having said that, if a small food plotter can find one used for a reasonable price, it is a workable drill. I've had mine for about 10 years now and paid 3K for it. I've posted the issues and modifications I've had to make over time with mine. It definitely gives me capability I would not otherwise have and the more I learn about soils, the more important I think methods of no-till are. Unless they have really improved the design over the last 10 years, if I had the option of buying a new Kasco or putting the same money into a use higher end drill, I'd probably opt or the latter. However, if you can find a used Kasco for a few thousand, it can be a good deal for the small food plotter.
Thanks,
Jack
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I got rained out to day so I finished the modifications to the Kasco. I made 3 more bin dividers and reversed the lid so it pivots away from the tractor so I can see the contents from the cab.
I plan to plant some sunflowers this spring, so I have two of the dividers in for planting two wide rows.
Thanks,
Jack
I plan to plant some sunflowers this spring, so I have two of the dividers in for planting two wide rows.
Thanks,
Jack
Freeborn
5 year old buck +
We're approaching planting time in my area and with that I'll be trying the Kasco Drill to plant clover. I've always had issues with Seed rates with clover as the seed is so small. I'm planting a small area, 1/2 acre, so I'm not using allot of Seed for a Drill. Has anybody used a medium in their Drill to improve seed coverage?
What have you seen that works or what would you try?
What have you seen that works or what would you try?
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I never plant Durana or any perennial clover in the spring. It takes much too long to establish and I have weed problems. It really needs a nurse crop and is best planted in the fall. I always plant it with winter Rye in my area. I typically don't use the Kasco for this surface broadcasting works fine for me and is much faster.
However, I have planted mixes with the kasco. You can calibrate it by plugging all the tubes but one and disconnecting the tube from the planting shoe and cable tying a baggy on the end of the tube. You drive a measured distance and then remove the bag and weight the seed. Multiply that by the number of tubes and you will know how much seed the drill will put out over a given distance. Do the math based on that distance and the width of your drill to get teh lbs/acre.
That is the general process for calibrating. If I were planting an annual clover in the spring and wanted to use the Kasco, I'd probably use oats as my nurse crop and carrier. I'd calibrate the drill for the seed rate I wanted for the oats as the clover seed is too small to matter. I'd then add the clover at the seed rate I want.
Personally I don't like cereal and clover planted in rows. Instead, I disconnect the tubes from the planting shoes and just let them bounce around. They are dropping the seed on the surface adn it is getting pressed in by the cultipacker which works well for me.
Thanks,
Jack
Freeborn
5 year old buck +
Yep, I have the same issue, without the perfect seed bed its difficult to get the seed covered. A press wheel would help allot. My simple flex 71 planter does a much better job of seed control and covering the seed but you need to till the soil. I also was wondering if the front disk would work better if it was a coulter so it made a larger seed trench.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I had similar issues. According to Kasco, you are supposed to lengthen or shorten the top-link to get the right balance between seed depth and cultipacker coverage. It simply did not work for me. I found the chain coming off happens because you make a turn and the cultipacker hits the ground sideways while the unit is lifted. In other words, it hangs to close to the ground when lifted.
I solved these issues with a hydraulic toplink: http://www.habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/hydraluic-toplink-transfered-from-qdma-forum.5539/
I can lengthen and shorten the toplink from the cab. I then put a short length of chain between the toplink and the connection to the unit. When transporting it I raise the hitch and shorten the toplink all the way. This lifts the cultipacker way up with no chance of hitting anything. When I ready to plant a row I drop the hitch and lengthen the top link until there is slack in the chain. This way, the Kasco sits completely level on the ground. In this way, it acts like a tow-behind drill and floats. This eliminates the gaps you get with a 3-point drill on uneven ground.
That leaves seed depth. I have heavy clay, but I'm in an area with good spring and fall moisture. Most of the time, I use the unit as-is and the depth is fine. Any seed that it is too deep for (like clover) can usually be surface broadcast and I don't use the drill. If I do use it, I just disconnect the seed tubs from the planting shoes and let them dangle free. They drop the seed randomly in front of the cultipacker. If I get a dry spell, I'm usually not planting during it, but if I do, just ahead of a rain and need more seed depth, I just add 5 gal buckets full of cement or sand. I put them on the frame in front of the seed box. I rarely have to do this because spring planting is not an issue for seed depth and most of the seed I plant for fall can be surface broadcast.
Planters will always have better seed control than a drill. That is what they are built for. A drill uses a "controlled spill" of seed. A drill uses a precise drop of seeds per distance. Most drills have specific plates for specific seeds and spacing.
Hope this helps,
Jack
Did this modification work good for you. As I too have trouble keeping seed tube on clogged. ThanksKASCO NOTILL VERSADRILL UPGRADE ATTEMPT
As you may know from some of my other posts, I've always had an issue with debris when using my Kasco no-till versa-drill. Debris builds up between the openers and the mud scrapers and eventually clogs the planting foot. I'd done a lot of messing around adjusting things. Some rows don't seem to have an issue but others do. I can't figure out what the difference is. I finally came up with an idea for modifying it.
I went to Lowes and bought a 3/4 inch flexible conduit fitting: https://www.lowes.com/pd/CARLON-3-4-in-Conduit-Fitting/3659290. I used cable ties for now to secure it to the existing planting foot. The lower opening is about an inch above the opening in the bottom of the planting shoe. It should not clog. The only issue I can see is that seed may be moving too fast and bounce out of the trench. If that happens I'll put a smaller fitting on the bottom to slow it down. I simply connected the seed tube to the top of the fitting instead of the planting shoe.
I plan to try this out. If it works, I'll probably replace the cable ties with hose clamps.
The next thing I plan to try to do is to make dividers for the seed box. On occasion I may want to plant one kind of seed in one row and another type in another row. If the seeds are about the same size they should meter at about the same rate.
I just used a piece of cardboard to make a template. When I get home, I'll use my table saw to cut a thin piece of plywood to see if it works. I plan to hold it in place by simply placing magnets on each side.
Thanks,
Jack
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I have not really tested the tubes much. We used to plant soybeans for summer but because of an issue with Marestail, we have been planting a mix of buckwheat and sunn hemp. They surface broadcast so easily that I don't bother drilling them, and our fall plant has always been surface broadcast. The only use they have had is that after broadcasting sunn hemp and buckwheat last year, I tried to drill a couple rows of sunflowers. I was using the Kasco as a cultipacker for the sunn hemp and buckwheat and just threw in some sunflowers for the heck of it.
The bin dividers worked "ok". Because they are not tight to the sides of the unit, some seed does spill into the next unit if you don't fill them all. In my case, I had sunflowers in both end rows and nothing in the middle rows. I think they will be fine if I have seed in all the units. Also, if I had fit them a bit tighter, they would be fine even with seed only in one unit.
As for the tubes, they worked pretty well. The only adjustment I might make is to lower them a bit more. I noticed that some of the sunflowers landed in the trough but bounced out. Most were in the trough. The real planting feet curve at the end and get tighter which slows the speed of the seed fall. I may rig something up similar at the end of the tubes to reduce the amount of bounce. As far as clogging goes, there was zero clogging with these tubes.
I was worried so much about clogging that I did not consider seed bounce when I designed them. I'm thinking of adding a 45 degree PVC elbow at the bottom next time I use it.
I just got an 8' double cultipacker: http://www.habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/cultipacker-finally.12178/. Last year, the deer ate the sunflowers as soon as they popped up so they did little good. This year I plan to add Wild Game Food sorghum to the mix. Since all of these can be surface broadcast and cultipacked, I won't be using the Kasco this year. I'm just waiting for the soil temps to warm up.
Thanks,
Jack
