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James22
11-15-2007 19:34:02
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Re: more notill drill questions in reply to jimgoddard, 11-14-2007 10:26:28
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Rather than press wheels, many conventional drills use chains behind each opener which "drags" the loose dirt over the seed. Seems to work OK, we did it for many years with an older Oliver drill. Small pressure wheels were optional, but personally I've never seen them on pre-1970 drills anywhere in the Mid West, but I'm sure someone bought one. When we were using the Oliver and later a JD, I thought a press wheel drill would be much better, and when I started farming that is what was bought. In my opinion it does a better job. In the past you had a choice of a 7 or 6 inch spacing and the Great Plains states did use the 6 inch spacing, but I never seen one in the Mid West. I understand that Great Britain still uses a narrrow spacing, 5 or 6 inches. If you want to sow grass seed, perhaps you should be looking at a notill grass seed drill. I think Brillion makes one which will seed into sod, but I don't know if it has a close spacing.
Great Plains notill drills have the drill attached at a pivot point which enables the drill openers to more closely follow the coulter cart slots when drilling on on a curvature; ie, "not going straight". If you are using a conventional drill with a pin hitch and a coulter cart you will get similar results. My drill is 3 point mounted to the coulter cart and the openers don't follow quite as well. I solved it by using two coulters per row so that a wider space is tilled. I use two on all the rows (20 ft drill) but probably could have been OK with double coulters on the outside 5 ft on each side. I use 12 or 13 wave coulters. I had 8 wave coulters but you needed to pull them faster than I wanted to drive to till satisfactorily. The JD notill drill uses a single disk opener, which many say works good. I didn't like the results if the soil was a little damp. The slot would reopen when the ground dried and exposed the seed. Perhaps some kind of spade wheel opener would help this problem. If you want a ten foot coulter cart and resale value isn't an issue, buy a 20 ft and cut the bar in half. Purchase the attaching brackets and then have a double bar coulter cart and put as many coulters on it as desired. You can choose from plain, bubble, scalloped, 8 wave, 12-13 wave, or 25 wave. Great Plains makes a great coulter, but as someone already stated, it is expensive. It's late and no time to check, so sorry if the spelling is poor or the thoughts are fragmented
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