6 Best Utv Hitch Mounted Seeders For Cover Crops That Build Living Soil
Boost soil health with cover crops. Our review of the 6 best UTV hitch-mounted seeders helps you find the right tool for building living soil efficiently.
You’ve just finished harvesting the last of your summer crops, and the bare soil is staring back at you. Leaving it exposed to the fall rains and winter winds feels wrong, like a missed opportunity. This is the perfect window to plant a cover crop, a living blanket that protects and nourishes your most valuable asset: your soil. A UTV-mounted seeder transforms this crucial task from a back-breaking chore into a quick, effective part of your farm’s rhythm.
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Why a UTV Seeder Boosts Your Soil Health Plan
A UTV seeder is about more than just speed; it’s about effectiveness. Getting cover crop seed down quickly and evenly, right when conditions are perfect, dramatically improves germination. Good timing means your cover crop gets established before the weeds do, creating a dense canopy that smothers competition.
This isn’t just about convenience. A consistent stand of clover, rye, or vetch means you get the full benefit of the plant’s work—fixing nitrogen, breaking up compacted soil, and adding organic matter. Patchy coverage from hand-seeding leads to patchy results. A UTV spreader gives you a professional-grade result with hobby-farm-scale equipment, ensuring every square foot of your plot is working to build fertility for next season.
Moultrie 100lb Spreader: Reliable & Simple
The Moultrie spreader comes from the world of wildlife food plots, and that background makes it tough and straightforward. There are no complicated electronics or delicate parts. It’s a simple 12-volt motor, a poly hopper, and a gate you open and close.
This simplicity is its greatest strength. When you only have a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, you need equipment that just works. The Moultrie hooks up easily, the controls are intuitive, and it throws seed reliably. It might not offer the most precise spread pattern for complex, multi-species mixes, but for broadcasting annual rye or winter peas, it’s a dependable tool that gets the job done without any fuss. It’s the perfect starting point for someone new to cover cropping.
Buyers Products ATVS100 for Even Coverage
The single most important factor for a successful cover crop stand is even seed distribution. The Buyers Products ATVS100 is designed with this in mind. Its enclosed motor and shielded spinner plate help create a consistent, predictable spread pattern, reducing the stripes and bare spots you can get with less refined models.
This matters because a dense, uniform cover crop smothers weeds and provides a consistent layer of organic matter when terminated. The 100-pound capacity is a sweet spot for many hobby farms, allowing you to cover a couple of acres without constant refilling. If you’ve struggled with patchy results in the past, upgrading to a spreader that prioritizes even coverage can make a world of difference.
Fimco ATV-DMS-12V: A Durable Workhorse
Some tools feel like they’re built for a season; others feel like they’re built for a decade. The Fimco dry material spreader falls into the latter category. With a rugged poly hopper and a steel frame, it’s designed to handle the bumps and jostles of real farm work, season after season.
This spreader is for the farmer who has fully integrated cover cropping into their annual plan. The variable speed controller gives you more command over your spread width, which is crucial when working around established beds or fence lines. It represents a step up in both durability and control, making it a wise investment if you’re managing multiple plots and seeding several times a year. It’s less of a purchase and more of a long-term addition to your farm’s toolkit.
Field Tuff AS-12V for Small-Scale Plots
Bigger isn’t always better, especially when you’re working in smaller, more intensively managed spaces. The Field Tuff AS-12V, with its 80-pound capacity, is perfectly scaled for market gardens, high tunnels, or multi-acre homesteads. Its smaller footprint and manageable spread width make it easy to maneuver in tight spots without overspray into unwanted areas.
Using a giant spreader on a quarter-acre plot is inefficient. You spend more time fiddling with the gate to get a low flow rate than you do actually seeding. The Field Tuff is the right tool for the job, giving you the efficiency of a UTV spreader without the overkill of a larger unit. It’s a practical choice that respects the scale of your operation.
Swisher 150 lb Universal for Larger Areas
Once your operation expands beyond a few acres, hopper capacity starts to dictate your workflow. The Swisher 150 lb Universal Spreader is built for efficiency over larger areas. That extra 50 pounds of capacity compared to standard models means fewer stops to refill, which can save a surprising amount of time when you’re trying to beat an incoming rainstorm.
This model often features a heavier-duty motor and a wider, more aggressive spread pattern to match its larger capacity. It’s designed to cover ground quickly. If you’re managing 5 to 15 acres of pasture, hayfield, or rotational plots, this is the scale of equipment that makes sense. It turns a full day’s work into a productive afternoon.
Earthway M30: Tow-Behind Precision Seeding
Sometimes, broadcasting isn’t the best method. For tiny, expensive seeds like certain clovers or for establishing perennial grasses, a drop spreader offers a level of precision a broadcast spreader can’t match. The Earthway M30 is a tow-behind unit that drops seed directly below, rather than throwing it in an arc.
This method gives you incredible control over seed placement and density, ensuring an even stand without wasting costly seed. The trade-off is speed and versatility. It’s slower than broadcasting and can struggle with large, irregular seeds found in many cover crop mixes, like field peas or oats. However, for establishing a pristine clover living mulch between garden beds, its precision is unbeatable. It’s a specialized tool for a specific, important job.
Calibrating Your Spreader for Cover Crop Mixes
No spreader works perfectly out of the box. The settings on the sticker are just a guess. Calibrating your spreader is the single most important step for success, and it’s not difficult. The goal is to confirm how much seed your spreader puts out over a known area.
A simple way to do this is the "tarp method." Lay out a 10×10 foot tarp (100 square feet), make a pass over it with your spreader at your normal driving speed, and then collect and weigh the seed that landed on it. If you collected 0.5 pounds of seed, your application rate is 0.5 pounds per 100 square feet. You can then scale that up to find your pounds-per-acre rate and adjust your spreader’s gate opening accordingly.
Cover crop mixes with different seed sizes—like small clover seeds and large oat seeds—present a challenge. The larger seeds tend to fly farther, while smaller seeds drop closer to the UTV. You can sometimes overcome this by reducing your spread width (driving your passes closer together) to ensure the patterns overlap sufficiently. A little testing before you seed the whole field saves a lot of money and prevents a disappointing, uneven stand.
Choosing the right UTV seeder isn’t about finding the "best" one, but the one that best fits the scale and goals of your farm. Whether it’s a simple, reliable broadcaster or a precise drop seeder, the right tool makes it possible to consistently invest in your soil. That investment pays dividends for years to come, building a resilient, fertile foundation for everything you grow.
