Kastens Inc. Farms

Farm Information: Equipment: Grain Drills

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In 2008, we decided that we needed more down-pressure at each unit to handle higher and higher volumes of crop residue. We purchased a John Deere 1990 CCS drill in the summer of 2008 and it worked superbly in all conditions. This drill will also be used to plant grain sorghum and yellow peas. Like the Sunflower, the JD drill is setup on 10" centers but unlike the Sunflowers it uses a CCS (Central Commodity System) as opposed to boxes. We did keep the 40' Sunflower drill so that we can still pull 80' of total drill in the fall. On the heaviest residue (stripped 70+ bu/ac wheat stubble or irrigated corn residue) we use the JD drill exclusively.

Here is the new drill on the JD 8530 tractor. We equipped the drill with a starter system from SureFire Ag Systems in Atwood, KS.

Here is the drill running in the field. Notice the "octopus on the right side, that is our fertilizer pump setup.

Here is a close-up of the "octopus". We are using a Hypro centrifugal pump hydraulically controlled using a Micro-Track flow controller and flow meter. This system is controlled by the John Deere GS2 controller in the cab.

This is the underneath side of the opener and is showing the Fin (big white plastic piece). The Fin replaces the closing wheel and is used to put on the starter fertilizer (notice black hose on left side of Fin). The Fin worked very well for both packing the seed in the bottom of the furrow as well as cleanly putting on our starter fertilizer.

Here we are running in irrigated corn stubble (notice wheat stubble on ground from previous year).

In this same field I have my pliers laying right on top of a planted row.

This picture shows the drill running in stripped 80+ bu/ac wheat stubble.

Here is what the wheat stubble looks like once it's planted.

Here is a close-up of a planted area. The silver thing in the middle is a "depth spoon" that we use to measure planting depth. In this case I'm using it to show straw depth. The spoon is sitting on top of the ground (right above a seed furrow) and shows 4" of straw on top of the planted row.

I've removed all of the straw and dug the furrow to check depth. The spoon shows 2" on the dot meaning that even with all of the straw and residue this drill put the seed at the exact depth I wanted with no hair-pinning or other problems. Quite a piece of machinery!

We have lot's of plans for this drill on the farm as we anticipate using it to drill a lot of wheat, plant a good chunk of the grain sorghum on 10" centers as well as yellow peas which are a new crop just being looked at on our farm in 2009.

Sunflower Grain Drills

In 2003 we moved our operation to 100% notill which required us to move from our traditional hoe style drills to double-disk drills. We used one 30' and one 40' Sunflower 9433 drill to meet our wheat planting needs until 2008. These are double-disk, three-section drills that have two in-line sections and one offset section. We currently use a JD Skiles starter fertilizer setup on each drill for placing up to 10 gallons per acre of starter fertilizer at planting time. Although not considered to be the ideal notill drills available, they function very well in almost all of our conditions and have low operating costs compared to "better" notill drills. At only 250 lb. of down pressure per opener, these drills sometime struggle getting the correct seed depth in years with hot and dry conditions at planting time. A John Deere 8400 tractor with Auto-Trac was used to pull the 30' drill while a John Deere 8420 with Auto-Trac was used to pull the 40' drill. A 1975 IH twin-screw Transtar 4600 with a 22' box and a rear mount flip-up auger is used to tender these two drills.

Planting wheat in continuous wheat stubble ground. (Fall 2005).

Chemical Fallow ground recently planted to wheat using the Sunflower grain drills. The Sunflower drills are very low disturbance as shown in the picture. (Fall 2005)

Filling both drills using the IH 4600. (Fall 2005)

Lester Yoos filling the 40' drill. (Fall 2005)

The Sunflower 9433 drills are an excellent low-residue notill drill. They work superbly in both notill and conventional tilled ground and are very low maintenance. The downside to this drill is the minimal unit down pressure it has which severely limits this drills performance with either high residue conditions or hard ground conditions.

Farm Information: Equipment: Grain Drills Back to Farm Equipment page

Farm Information: Equipment: Grain Drills

Back to Farm Equipment page