No till drill school

Ok I need some direction on a no till drill. I would love a Deere 750 ten footer but these things seem to be partially made of gold because even a wore out one brings $14k. So I'm looking at others. I'm a small acreage guy who needs a no till capable drill with a grass box. 10' width is the size for me as my fields are too small for a bigger one and a smaller than that will simply take too long. What are some other manufacturers that make a good drill? I'll be using it for small grains, beans, cover crops, and inter seeding pastures.

The modern ones are not going to be cheap no matter what you look at. Tye had a reputation back before notill got to be wide spread. I don't know if they are still around but that might be the starting point for a less expensive drill. I think a cheaper 750 is out there but you may have to hit the consignment sales such as Mowery's in Illinois or an equivalent there of. You are right in that any dealer thinks their drill sitting on the lot is made of gold.

Great Plains Mfg. I've had a Great Plains no-til drill for 13 years. Plant soybeans and alfalfa with it. No complaints and no problems. You can buy them with as many as three seed boxes. I have two. The first year I had it, I planted soybeans right into thick quack sod. Had a beautiful crop. Since then, I've planted into alfalfa sod that I disced down. Worked great there, too.

What model specifically should I be looking for? There are a lot of Great Plains drills on tractorhouse

1006NT is their current 10' end wheel no-til drill. If you find an older one that you like with a different number, get on the Great Plains website and click on manuals where they have manuals for every machine they've ever made. Look under "vintage".

We have a 14' no-till from United Farm Tools, now Art's Way. Does a good job for us.

A couple of questions come to mind.

I was looking at drills before buying a JD a year ago. I think it was a new Great Plains I looked at, on which the depth gauge wheels were quite far removed from the openers. I looked to me like it would only be suited for perfectly level ground.

Around here bean growers have found they cannot plant into any competition and get a stand. I don't know if it's the soil, or weather differences. If weeds come up with the beans, and get killed off with glyphosate, it's OK, but, even though beans, unlike corn, make up their minds on what they'll produce late in the season, they can't seem to tolerate competition at the start.

On mine, the depth gauge wheels are the closing wheels which are attached directly to the opener frame and immediately follow the seed openers thereby serving to both gauge seed depth and also close the seed trench. They can't be any more than 18" behind the openers, if that. Even if the field was quite hilly, and some of mine are, the ground between the seed trench opening coulters and the closing wheels would be essentially "level" due to the relatively short distance. The seed depth adjustment is from 0 to 3.5 inches with each notch on the closing wheels allowing one eight of an inch adjustment. Seeds can be anywhere from 1/2 inch to 2" deep and grow just fine.

As far as competition, I'm sure you're right. When I planted into sod, something had been done to kill the plants growing there. (Round Up or disking) I was trying to point out the "no-til" abilities of the machine. In the case of the "quack sod", I had quack grass about 3' tall that was sprayed with roundup. As soon as I saw the grass going down, I planted soybeans right into the sod with absolutely no tillage. By the time the soybeans emerged, the quack was dead. In fact, it served as a nice mulch for the soybeans. I've seen pictures of this same thing being done into rye grass with good results. I've been wanting to try it but I've never been able to plant the rye early enough due to the weather. Wisconsin, you know.

I was just looking at a Tractor House sale magazine at work the other day and there was a place in there that had a used TYE for $6800 dollars. It was an 8 foot wide model. That's why I noticed it because it was only 8 foot but very heavy duty no till model. Pic up a copy of Tractor house. It was in there somewhere. I don't have the mag with me but you might be able to go online and find it in there.

Thank you for the clarification. A neighbor here who went from a 15' no till drill to a 30' air seeder recently got it back home- after bringing it to a 100 acre farm here, just before the flooding resumed. He's now got 200 acres of beans he isn't planting. He told me this morning-"it's really discouraging that the beans growing in the drill look better than beans in the field"!

AGCO bought Tye and then discontinued the line some years ago. I'd check on parts availability. Same thing with Art's-Way/UFT drills. A-W stopped making them and parts support is scanty so I've heard. I have a Marliss that is starting to be a pain to keep going since Sukup stopped making them a few years ago.

We have a Great Plains solid stand 10 -7.5 in
Spacing. Think bought it new in 90. Have 4700 acres on it. Have put new coulters and disk on twice. Real quality unit. Takes more HP than you think and is heavier than it looks. Needs about 75 HP. Works best at 7 mph.

Three years ago I traded for a 10' GT 1006 No-Till Drill that was built by Moore in Ireland, They are still making them so parts aren't to bad. It's a heavy drill and it will put the seed in the ground. Some have grass seed box's some don't but it dose a good job no-tilling soybeans into heavy grass and corn stocks. They were asking $6500 for it and it's in good shape so I did some trading for it and have way less in it than they were asking for it. Just something to look at, Something different. Bandit

That's exactly the type of unit I'm looking for. Thanks for the pics.

I can get one of these GT1006 for $3000 but there is no grass box. Any chance it will meter small enough for fescue? I doubt I would find a grass box to add on.

(quoted from post at 07:40:26 06/30/15) Ok I need some direction on a no till drill. I would love a Deere 750 ten footer but these things seem to be partially made of gold because even a wore out one brings $14k. So I'm looking at others. I'm a small acreage guy who needs a no till capable drill with a grass box. 10' width is the size for me as my fields are too small for a bigger one and a smaller than that will simply take too long. What are some other manufacturers that make a good drill? I'll be using it for small grains, beans, cover crops, and inter seeding pastures.

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I have a 3pt 6' Truax with 3 seed boxes for sale. They still build them in MN.