At some point no-tillers who own drills are going to need to upgrade to a new one. This month’s Farmer’s Forum message board was chock full of information concerning many of the major manufacturers of no-till drills. Also being hotly debated were the use of seed tube splitters.

These were just two of the many cropping and equipment topics kicked around by no-tillers at www.no-tillfarmer.com. Join the discussion and debates, which will help no-tillers around the world flourish for years and generations to come.

Dynamite Drills

What’s the best no-till drill on the market? We presently have a Best Drill with Acra-Plant openers, which works well, but we are due for a replacement. We had been looking at Crustbuster, but have noticed many of them are for sale with only a few acres of use on them. That makes us wonder what is wrong with their performance.

The Sunflower has a straight-forward design, plus it has a nice design for folding up to move down the road. But, I have seen what appeared to be problems with their seed tubes on a no-till wheat stand a year or two ago.

The seed tubes were holding seed when crossing over terraces. Once over the ridge, the tube straightened out and dumped a load of seed on the other side of the terrace. I never found out if that was normal or not, but there was an obvious problem with the machine.

I know the reputation of the John Deere drills, but…