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When planting food plots or native warm season grass in forest stands for
wildlife, it can be very beneficial using the no-till drill.
This insures you'll have good seed soil contact, uniform planting depth, and
conservation of soil moisture and organic matter.
This will lead to good planting success and can reduce risk of failure.
When using a no-till drill, or any planting method,
it's very important to calibrate your seeding equipment.
Oftentimes, due to varying seed size and amounts of chaff and
pure live seed in a seed blend.
The actual seeding rate can vary from the recommended setting on your no-till drill.
Through calibration,
we can adjust the exact amount of pure live seed being planted per acre.
This ensures that we plant at the recommended rate per acre.
And will not run out of seed, seed too lightly, or
waste money seeding too heavily.
First, let's look over the Truax No-Till Drill that we will be calibrating.
It has three seed boxes for different size seeds, and
each seed box has its own seed rate adjustment to adjust the seed output.
The front box is for clovers, brassicas, switchgrass, and many native forest.
Its seed rate can be adjusted with the small lever on the front of the box.
The center box is a native grass or fluffy seed box, and
it's made to handle fluffy seed.
Or seed with lots of chaff, like big and little blue stem, as well as Indian grass.
The fluffy seed box has augers and
picker wheels to help the seed flow through the drill.
The seed rate for this box can be adjusted by the chain and
gear system below the safety shield on the front of the drill.
The rear box is the grain boxes made for large seeds, like soy beans, oats, wheat,
and other grains.
Its seed rate can be adjusted by the large lever on the back of the drill.
Feeder tubes funnel seed down from the seed boxes to the disc openers,
where it is planted.
The drive wheel is on the right side of the drill and
runs all the mechanisms of the drill when it is engaged and turning.
The pin on the inside of the drive wheel can be used to engage and
disengage the drill mechanisms for planting or transportation.
We will be covering the fluffy seed box for our forb and grass mix.
If the seed has been cleaned and most of the chaff removed.
You can actually mix the forb and grass seed together and
place in the fluffy seed box.
Or you can mix it with a carrier, like cracked corn, and
place it in the grain box.
If the seed is not dechaffed, you should place the forb seed in the small seed box.
And the native grass seed in the fluffy seed box and calibrate separately.
Usually, the seed company will pre-mix the forb and
grass seed together if it has been dechaffed.
Dechaffing is a common practice, but it's worth asking your seed company prior to
purchasing whether they dechaff their seed.
To begin calibrating,
locate the label on the inside of one of the large seed boxes on your drill.
The label says to place seed in three of the seed cups.
Turn the drive wheel with the pin engaged for 13 and a quarter turns,
then weigh the output of all three seed cups combined in grams.
Divide this number by 2 to yield the pounds per acre planted of this seed box.
As a note of caution, remember that this represents your bulk seeding rate and
not your pure live seed or PLS per an acre.
You can learn more about calculating your pure live seed and
bulk seed rate by going to the link in the video description.
First, adjust the gear up for the fluffy seed box to the recommended setting.
You can increase the seed rate by moving the chain to the left
to a smaller sprocket.
Or decrease by moving to the right to a larger sprocket.
If there is not a chart that corresponds with the seed you are planting,
start the calibration process on the middle setting.
If your drill's a rental,
you do not know what the landowner before you was planting.
To guarantee that you're planting your seed, and only your seed,
you should vacuum out the seed boxes prior to calibration and planting.
Next, pour seed into three of the seed cups and
remove the tubes from the bottom of the seed box.
To measure the seed of output,
we will need to weigh the seed dropping out of these cups.
This can be easily done with the help of one or
two extra people holding cups under the seed cups.
However, when calibrating a drill alone, it is often helpful to secure bags
to the bottom of the seed cups with rubber bands or zip ties.
Just remember not to secure them too tightly or
you won't be able to remove them when you're done.
Now turn the drive wheel with a pin and gauge for 13 and a quarter turns.
You can use the drive pin or tire valve stem as a reference as you turn.
Make sure that the pin is is engaged and the drive wheel is off the ground.
On many drills,
this will require that you use a jack to lift the drive wheel off the ground.
If a jack is not available, you can drive the drill 100 feet,
which is equivalent to 13 and a quarter turns.
Tear you scale, then remove the bags or cups from under each seat cover,
combine them together and weigh the contents in grams.
Take this weight and divide it by 2, as indicated on the box label.
In this example, our measured weight is 24 grams divided by 2 equals 12,
this is our bulk pounds per acre weight.
To ensure that your measurements are accurate,
calibrate three times then take the average of these three readings.
For our example, we got 12, 11 and 13 pounds seed rates.
This averages together to give you 12 pounds of bulk seed per an acre.
However, our desired seed rate is six pounds bulk seed per acre,
which equals four pounds pure live seed for our seed mixture.
So we will need to move the chain to the right, to a larger sprocket,
to decrease our seed rate.
Now that we have adjusted our seed rate, we will recalibrate and
make adjustments until we've reached our desired bulk seed rate.
When calibrating the small seed box or the grain box, all steps remain the same.
Except that you will measure the seed output and
make adjustments on the seed boxes independently.
Either one can be increased by moving the lever to the right to increase seed rate,
or moving to the left to decrease seed rate.
Remember when you're done to lock the lever down so
that your seed rate doesn't change while you're planting.
Due to lower seeding rates for wildlife and more efficient seed cleaning.
It may be difficult to achieve a low enough bulk seed rate on your drill.
If so, you could add a filler to increase the bulk seed weight of your seed mixture.
Vermiculite is a great choice when planting native warm season grasses with
a fluffy seed box.
Cracked corn, or clay absorbent, like you'd use on your driveway,
are better choices when planting native grasses using your grain box.
Cat litter is a great filler to use when planting using your small seed box,
remember, adding fillers will change your seeding rate.
To learn more about adjusting your seeding rate using fillers,
go to the link in the video description.
Another way to calibrate any no-till drill is by using the 1/100 Acre Method.
You can do this by catching the seed output of the drill,
while planting 1/100 of an acre, and then multiplying this number by 100.
This yields your pounds per an acre rate.
First, we'll need to measure the width of our drill, in this case, 8 feet.
Next, count the number of rows in our drill, in this case, 12.
Then we'll need to measure the 1/100 of an acre plot.
To measure out our 1/100 of an acre plot,
we will need to take the width of our drill and multiply it by 100.
Then divide 43,560 by this number.
This will yield the number of feet you need to drive your drill to achieve your
1/100 of an acre plot size.
For our drill, the math indicates that we will need to drive 54.45 feet.
We will measure the distance off with a tape, flag it.
Then drive the drill the distance while catching
the seed from three of the seed cups.
We will then take the average of the three seed cups
to get our individual seed cup rate.
Now that you have the average seed cup output,
multiply times the number of rows in the drill, in our case 12.
This will yield your pounds per 100th of an acre planted.
Multiply this by 100 to yield your pounds per acre planted.
It may be difficult to calibrate your drill to the exact seed rate desired.
If so, air on the side of seeding too lightly,
you can always make an extra pass.
And this guarantees that if you do overlap your passes slightly,
you won't run out of seed too soon.
When complete, reattach the tubes to the seed boxes,
fill the entire seed box up with seed, and you're ready to plant.
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