We used a L3902 (37ish HP) for the work and used a box blade to smooth out the surface before planting. There were some spots that were a little on the "concrete" side of clay loam due to a lack of rain and recent travel from the heavier machinery building the pond. The Kubota pulled it just fine. Where the soil was hard, the front blades scratched the surface vs actually cutting a small V in the soil but that has nothing to due with the tractor itself.....all about the weight of the drill.
Franklin County has the 606NT (hydraulic) from Great Plains.
Our seeding adventure didn't go off super smoothly but for a rookie doing it the first time it was a great experience overall.
Our first challenge was the tractor didn't have rear hydraulic ports. We had to get the tractor back to the dealer for installation. We then moved on to picking up the drill itself which uses a 1" hitch pin instead of a standard ball type mount. This wasn't bad as the drill came is a 1" pin that mounts into a standard receiver for a hitch. However, the tractor had a 7/8" max pin size. Off to tractor supply I go. Found a 7/8" x 6-1/4" on the second store and it worked just fine as well. I had never done this type of work before so I did a little reading on the 606NT as it has three boxes for seed and all can be used at the same time with varying rates for each box. Talked to a local farmer and asked for some mentoring on site just to make sure I was covered. There is only so much one man can learn from youtube :P Saturday at 1PM we started loading the seeder. The county provided a couple of pages on how to set it up for various seeds and we matched the setting on lbs per acre to the seed. As is turned out the seed we were using in the second box was a little small and it was bypassing the cups in the seeder. We managed to do with it what we could and made a run back to town to get some additional seed. Our only other hiccup was making sure to watch the tubes on the back box as they tended to plug up and stop putting seeds out through the tubes. It was easy to clear, just had to be mindful of it.
We used erosion control grasses with a hint of Alfalfa and Clover on and around the pond dam. 75' on the slope in the pic to the water will be grass this same grass mix. Moving up the hill there's a center section that we changed to pollinator mix which was heavy on clover, and then blended in some wildflower and alfalfa. Our mini orchard reverted back to the grass, clover and alfalfa mix. Ultimately we should have a bit of flowering throughout the pond area with a central section dedicated to those wonderful pollinators.
We wrapped up seeding pretty close to dark. Got the seeder back to the county and as forecasted it rained a little today. Looking forward to the coming weeks to see how we did on the combination of a grass border with a pollinator/wildflower mix next to the small orchard.
Fingers crossed we have decent coverage and germination. It's 100% in mother natures hands now. May be a little over seeding in the fall if we need it but I hear it takes a 2-3 years to really get a good stand of grass going.
Personally, I think a 33hp would likely be more than enough with 4WD. I think the seeder weighs approx 2,700 lbs. Gradual slopes were pretty easy. The pond dam gave me a little of the pucker factor but I just went slow and worked through what I felt like I could and hand threw anything I was uncomfortable with.
