finished a couple of hours ago, over a inch and it's still pouring.


good clean living

When you have enough send a few inches or so my way. I need some on my plots and tank water also.

it'll be there Monday at 1pm

Thank you Jesus....

Nice pictures stx! Yes, I imported the this planter from China a couple of years ago. I found it by searching the web when I was considering another planter that was already imported and sold by a distributor in the US (tillerman1972 on eBay).

To back up, I wanted a tiller based planting system, one that would do it all in one pass; till, fertilize, seed, and pack. Every complete US manufactured system is made for a prepared plot or is harrow based. You can harrow my fields until you run out of fuel but it won't adequately prep the soil, the harrow simply reshuffles the clods. The machine I found does everything.

It is a 2BFG-14 Planter from Shijiazhuang Agricultural Machinery Co Ltd that is marketed for the hard soils of southwest Asia and Africa which makes it just about perfect for South Texas!



I've been real pleased with the planting results and it has cut down my time on a field considerably as I don't have to keep changing out implements during planting. If I could change anything it would be the size of the fertilizer box.



At the rate we typically use fertilizer, it should be about three times larger. The contact in China and I enjoy emailing each other frequently and he was shocked at the rate we apply fertilizers to the soil. With the conditions of our coastal waters I guess we should be concerned as well but when I get soil samples back I feel luck if the suggested rates are less than 200 to 300# of X-X-X an acre. They have helped me by changing the size and tooth count on the chain sprocket that drives the fertilizer box for the rate but at best you are looking at a capacity for 1/2 an acre. Still it isn't bad as most of my plots are not larger than that and I typically only load the boxes for was is needed for the specific field so that I ensure I'm not going long or short on product. I just load the bags on the catwalk behind the boxes.

Spare parts are easy. I ordered my first batch this past January. Honestly, I was sweating it but was really surprised. The parts are dirt cheap but the shipping high as it needs to go by air to avoid the Customs Port stuff. My order consisted of 33 different parts from sprockets to disc opener fenders to chains. The parts total was $34.50. Shipping was $79 for a total of $133.50 which my bank wires to their bank. I have Kubota, John Deere, and Brillion equipment and I would have expected to pay well over $550 for a similar mix of parts. The weird thing is that 2½ days later a DHL truck showed up and asked me where to unload the crate! I cannot order parts from MN and expect them here in less than 7 days for my other equipment. So, based on my experience, I don't think parts are a problem. I just emailed my contact about another order of spares, not that I'm consuming parts but when they are this cheap I will stockpile them, and my contact said it would be as quick and simple as before.

As far as the purchase, it was simple. Wire the money and they put it on a ship. It came into LA over Christmas which was poor timing on my part as the port is overwhelmed with ships waiting to unload. It didn't clear Customs there but the secure container is placed on a rail car to the Dallas Port. Dallas (at DFW) calls you when it arrives and you have 48 hours to pick it up or you start incurring storage fees. You use a broker to handle it through the ports. Shipping time was six week because of the delays in LA but it is pretty cool as you can track the shipment as it crosses the ocean via the shipping company's website. What was really a nice touch was that they sent me pictures and videos of the test run and packing just to help reassure me that everything was as expected. Their contact, Jerry Zhang was a straight up guy. Like I said, we keep in contact and share a lot of pictures of life on opposite sides of the world.

Cost? The planter was $3070, freight was $380, and broker & Customs bonds & fees $829 for a total of $4279. The fees could have been cut in half because I didn't understand the instructions as I arranged for a broker in LA and didn't need to, just DFW. It is not a total loss on that money as the LA guy did go personally go locate the container and ensure it got on a rail car. It might have sat there a month without a local guy. At the time, a 7' planter from the ebay guy was $3650 plus $587 for freight for a total of $4237. So I just broke even moneywise but I got the fertilizer application, complete seed metering, and disk openers for controlling seed depth and that is what I wanted to realize in the end.

I do have a 8' tiller from the tillerguy1792 and love it. Had he been importing this planter, I would have bought it from him even if it cost me a grand extra. When I bought the Chinese tiller all the old farmers around here scoffed and said it wouldn't last. Got news for them, it is going on 10 years and will chew through anything in it's path. It is what reassured me that this planter would be good to go.

They now have a larger planter-seeder and it does have me salivating!

I really enjoy see all the work others are doing!

Thanks for the info. The one I posted pics of is $1499 US dollars without the shipping and customs. The smallest one made is around 70" wide and takes a minimum of 60hp...not sure if that is engine or PTO hp.
http://m.made-in-china.com/product/Rotary-Seeder-721973295.html
This one is a minimum of two units for an order.
https://nonghaha.en.alibaba.com/product/...eat_seeder.html

What does yours take for minimum HP. I see a Kubota in the pics and I am guessing 85 to 100 HP. I may need to run over and see your unit in person.

What is your groundspeed when running it?

Thanks for the info Ranch Dog

Ranch Dog when I googled rotary tiller/seeder your video came up and I viewed it back a couple of months ago. The gearboxes on them seem to be very heavy duty also.
Also, do you shred first and/or pre-disc or plow your plots?

Offhand, I want to say it was 65 HP as a minimum. Yeah, I have the 8540 (85 HP) so it is quite comfortable.

Yeah, you are welcome to stop buy anytime.

As far as speed, it just depends on soil conditions. I use low range 1st through 3rd which is basically from 1.35 to 3.5 MPH. Normally I run the other tiller across the selected plots a couple of weeks out from planting and then go in with the planter and can operate in 3rd which is moving along at a pretty good rate. This year I was lazy and paid for it in 1st!

You're welcome.

Thanks for the info and feedback. Do you think those units I showed above would work as well and does the pricing seem legit?

Yeah, the boxes are a tank. They are 100 HP gear boxes. On my straight up tiller I decided to change the oil this year. Like I said it is 10 years old. I opened it up and it was as clean as if new. I went ahead and changed it anyway. The box takes 2½ gallons of 80-90W. Just old fashion gear oil.

Here is what I actually like to do. I spray and burn the plots about a month out from planting. Usually, I haven't done a thing to them from the previous planting. My preference is to use the straight up tiller for that work. That statement causes me to wonder about using the tiller/planter as a straight tiller? If you did, I would pull all the disk openers off to avoid damaging them if the ground was really tough. That would take about 15 minutes.

Here's my food plot pics from this year so far. About 80 acres down and about 5 more to go.

100 HP JD Tractor Oldie but works good.



Plowing



One field before shredding



This is planted and ready to go overlooking the river bottom.




One of the other river fields


A few I planted about 10 days ago have had about 2" rain on them and already up.



Drag I built and use a lot

The best thing to do is contact the outfit and see what response you get as I really would hate to speculate on doing business with someone I have not worked with. As far as choosing one, make sure it is going to do everything that you want it to do. Beyond horsepower you want it as wide or wider than your tractor. Another consideration is concerning the seed boxes, just what type of seed it can handle and is the rate of drop adjustable. Mine handles large or small seed or mixed seeds with complete rate adjustment. Also look at how many rows are planted and the spacing. Can you control row spacing, mine uses cutoffs of the meters, same with the fertilizer boxes. The planter in MO (eBay) lacked all these control points.

I will say that if the manufacturer doesn't overload you with info & videos, I would be hesitant to send them money. My experience was that everything thing was covered in detail. They had videos of the planters being manufactured and in the field. Ask for reference, who has imported one to the US. I was the first with this outfit and they have since had a fellow in NJ buy one. Him and I share information, he operates a truck farm.

That works txbobcat! Looks good!

You have me interested in those all in one units now. Going to have to research some.

The links I posted say you can detach the seeding unit to use just the tiller. I will check with them and see how much info I can find out.

Might have to go in as a group to see about pricing on more than one unit. The one link I posted shows 2 units minimum to buy.

A group buy on tillers, that would be cool. They are gon'na go into DFW so that should work for most.

I've been looking at the two links you sent and I would think that the pricing on the $14XX unit isn't legit. Also have some comments on the units themselves after looking at them on zoom but I've got some family stuff to do. Might be in the morning.

That was my thoughts on pricing as well. That is why I asked about your pricing first. I would think that price is good for either the tiller only or the seeding unit only.

There used to be a guy that was around here that took the full size drills and made 2 out of them. These were just for food plots, with a good tractor I think a disc plow could be used in tandem with the 1/2 sized grain drill.

Lot of cattle guys down here run a disc with the same width grain drill behind it to plant haygrazer or small grains for hay/grazing. Takes a lot of room to turn and my plots would be to small for that. I think my JD grain drill is only 10' wide and plants 9' more or less. I wanted a smaller one but they were to hard to find when I was looking. They get expensive since guys want the older mechanical lifts to pull behind an ATV or smaller tractor for food plots in the midwest.