News Articles // January // 2007 - 01/01/2007
Article 1 // JANUARY 2007
Spaldings Aquires Rights To Side Knife
Spaldings UK Ltd has purchased the assets, design rights, work in progress and manufacturing rights of Sheffield-based JT Engineering’s combine side knife for direct cutting oilseed rape and beans.
Coincidently known and marketed for the last 20 years as the Spalding Side Knife, it is designed to fit most combine cutting beds including Claas, Case/IH, New Holland, MF, John Deere and Laverda.
The new side knife dovetails along side Spaldings existing range of Flatlift oilseed rape cultivation and crop establishment equipment. It will be re-launched as the ‘Spaldings Side Knife ™’ and is designed to improve combine performance and speed when direct cutting oilseed rape and beans.
A high-speed 12-volt traction motor moves the blade at 350 strokes per minute along the full 1.2m cutting length, allowing easier crop penetration. The knife comes with a full spares back-up, one-year full warranty and is UK manufactured.
Marketing manager Alastair Ramsay says that due to renewed confidence in UK agriculture, particularly in oilseed rape production for renewable energy and bio-fuels, there has already been significant interest from arable farmers.
“Maximising yields and reducing costs remain a key objective,” he says. “Direct cutting can reduce production costs by £35/ha by eliminating a contractors swathing charge. Distributor trials this harvest have shown that loses using direct cutting methods were only 11% compared to 25% in a swathed crop.”
A recent survey has also shown that 97% of growers consider oilseed rape harvesting ease and speed important to their business. Just under 70% identified lower harvesting costs – including both fuel and labour savings – as a key benefit of direct combining, with quicker combining and reduced contractor use valued by more than a third of growers.
Spaldings have the full range now in-stock, for out of season deals contact agsales@spaldings.co.uk Telephone 01522 500600 or contact your local representative.
Spaldings SideKnife™ is now in-stock, for full details please visit our Online Agricultural Catalogue and check out the listing under combine parts, contact any member of our sales team,
telephone: 01522 507 600 or e-mail: agsales@spaldings.co.uk
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Article 2 // JANUARY
Flatlift Versatility
There are those who plough and there are those who min-till. After more than a decade of trials, assessments and debates it would seem that the vast majority of UK farms now use one or both of these systems to establish their crops.
But for George Ponsonby, who farms 800ha (2000acres) at Lichlade, Gloucestershire, the plan is rather different. He direct-drills and he ploughs.
“I know it seems a strange combination but its one that appears to be working for us,” he insists.
Half of the farm is down to winter wheat and the other half is in oilseed rape, spring beans and a small area of linseed. Alternating the winter wheat with the break crops means that there are no second wheats.
“The plan is to direct-drill the oilseed rape and wheat after beans and linseed and plough for the wheat after rape and for the beans and linseed,” he explains.
“If it wasn’t for the grass weeds I would probably direct-drill all the wheats.”
Much of the farm has blackgrass problems. In recent years there has also been an element of herbicide resistance, which has meant that cultural control methods have had to be employed along with timed eradication in the autumn.
“The best control for blackgrass is glyphosate,” points out Mr Ponsonby, who is also an agronomist. “And that means either achieving a good weed chit in the autumn and spraying it off or, better still, leaving it to green up over the winter and then spraying off prior to drilling spring crops.”
He adds that the combination of ploughing, the use of selective herbicides and the creation of stale seedbeds has helped to hold, if not improve, the farm’s blackgrass problem.
For direct-drilling a 4m Horsch CO4 tine drill is usually employed but last year events took a different turn when it came to the oilseed rape.
The farm had owned a 2.8m Flatlift subsoiler/cultivator for some time and had used it regularly to subsoil headlands, tramlines and, when required, whole fields. It occurred to Mr Ponsonby that this implement could form the basis of a unit which could plant the rape.
“I thought that if the rape seed could be placed immediately behind tines on the implement’s tool bar it would be in moist soil and, after a pressing with the rear roller, was almost bound to grow,” he says.
The first modification was to add a fourth subsoiling leg to create another groove of broken soil. The four clod-smashing spring tines – complete with their auto-reset systems – were moved so that they were in line with the subsoiler legs.
A Spaldings seeder unit was the next item to be attached to the rear of the frame. An electrically powered fan conveys seed metered from the hopper to four outlets positioned on the rear of the spring tines.
The idea is not to broadcast the seed across the width of the implement but to place it in bands into the cultivated soil immediately behind the spring tines.
“We borrowed some dual band spreader plates from the Horsch drill to help ensure the seed was spread over a three inch band,” he explains. “The rows are about 18in apart.”
With a 200hp 7920 John Deere tractor in front, the Flatlift, complete with its seeding system was given its first outing in late August and it appeared to work well with the seed dropping into the subsoiled and cultivated areas and then pressed into the moist soil.
But just how effective the system was became clear when half a field of rape was drilled with the Flatlift and the other half by the Horsch.
“It was really quite staggering to see the difference between the two areas once they had become established,” says Mr Ponsonby.
“While the plants in the Horsch-sown area were but a few inches tall and looked less than happy with life, plants in the Flatlift-area were half as tall again, looked green and lush, and had roots which were almost double the length.”
Mr Ponsonby concedes that the planting time this year for oilseed rape has been almost ideal but is equally convinced that the Flatlift sowing system could make a difference of there being a crop or no crop in more difficult conditions – excessively wet or dry.
Just how well the Flatlift sown crops perform at harvest remains to be seen but he is confident there will be a yield gain when compared to the conventionally direct-drilled rape. Mr Ponsonby says he intends to measure the yields from the respective plots.
“The point is that we grow oilseed rape as a break crop with the idea of maximising our wheat yields,” he says. “If by growing this crop we can improve soil structure and produce a good crop with a decent yield, then we must be doing something right.”
George Ponsonby: “I think we shall reduce seed rate when we use it next year to sow our oilseed rape to about 2kg/ha. With virtually every seed germinating there is the opportunity to cut back on seed – the crops benefit from better spacing and yield better as a result.”
For further details of Spaldings versatile range of FLATLIFT® sub-surface cultivators, please visit Online Agricultural Catalogue contact any member of our sales team, telephone: 01522 507 600
or e-mail: agsales@spaldings.co.uk
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