Cultivator Drill suggestions

[pmartens07]

To introduce myself: my name is Peter Martens, we operate 1900ac/760Ha of Organic land roughly 400km north west of New York City. Most of our ground is loamy though we have areas of heavy clay made up of weather shale. We have plenty of round rocks but not too many flat rocks.

We currently operate a 4.50m Kuhn rotary cultivator, Amazone front tank, and home built drill bar using Great Plains openers on 12.5cm spacing. We also use the same drill bar on a self modified 4.50m Unia Ares Disc.

we would like to be able to plant faster and apply starter fertilizer with the seed. We are considering Horsch, pottinger, and vaderstad disc cultivator drills probably in a 6m width but would consider 9m if we could handle it with our Fendt 936.

I’m seeking any suggestions or thoughts from you all as cultivator drills are pretty much unheard of here

thanks!

 

[Pilatus]

To introduce myself: my name is Peter Martens, we operate 1900ac/760Ha of Organic land roughly 400km north west of New York City. Most of our ground is loamy though we have areas of heavy clay made up of weather shale. We have plenty of round rocks but not too many flat rocks.

We currently operate a 4.50m Kuhn rotary cultivator, Amazone front tank, and home built drill bar using Great Plains openers on 12.5cm spacing. We also use the same drill bar on a self modified 4.50m Unia Ares Disc.

we would like to be able to plant faster and apply starter fertilizer with the seed. We are considering Horsch, pottinger, and vaderstad disc cultivator drills probably in a 6m width but would consider 9m if we could handle it with our Fendt 936.

I’m seeking any suggestions or thoughts from you all as cultivator drills are pretty much unheard of here

thanks!

Welcome to TFF, always great to hear from farmers around the globe.I am sure you will get plenty of suggestions.
It would be interesting to hear more about how you farm organically as regards rotation ,weed control, etc etc. Thankyou

 

[Agriimark]

what do you use to prepare the ground ready for drilling. never used a pottinger but horsch and vaderstad both great. i always believe if it won't go with a vad then nothing else will.

 

[pmartens07]

We currently moldboard plow about 250ac for malt barley and 100ac for wheat after oats. The rest is disked with a heavy Kuhn Krause tandem disc after various types of beans (150-200ac each soybeans and black/kidney/pinto beans) and then worked over a second time while drilling.

We drill about 1100ac a year: 100 of oats, 50 forage peas, 200 buckwheat double crop after malt barley, 50 Sudangrass after malt barley, 250 of barley, 250 of wheat, up to 200 triticale for silage, smaller acreages of spelt, einkorn, and winter lentils.

We have our own grain cleaning and packing facility so the large majority of what we grow is sold either for seed or for food. Only about 100ac of soybeans and 250ac of grain maize go for livestock feed

 

[Oscar]

Only thingI would say is that the disc drills need a firmer seedbed to give the disc something to bite into or else they will stall and wear a straight edge which basically ruins the disc . They also do a lot of cultivating ( especially with front working discs in addition to the drill discs ) so be careful not to overwork the ground in front or put it another way , you may find the drill will do both jobs in one . A 6m Vaderstad will be perfect on a 936. Downside to them is in wetter conditions headlands can take a pounding and if possible would be best drilled last and even better, worked up prior to drilling to remove the tightness however I know that's not always an option .
Use to have a Vaderstad rapid myself, good drill.

 

[pmartens07]

We did a demo of a Horsch Pronto AS last year and I thought it did a good job but was cumbersome on the headlands. The DC doesn’t look quite as long.

As I said, these things are practically unheard of here, our Horsch dealer would be 200km away, pottinger is 80km, and vaderstad is about 400km away in Canada. Not sure how much dealer support we should figure on but none of them will be able to give very quick help.

 

[Pilatus]

We did a demo of a Horsch Pronto AS last year and I thought it did a good job but was cumbersome on the headlands. The DC doesn’t look quite as long.

As I said, these things are practically unheard of here, our Horsch dealer would be 200km away, pottinger is 80km, and vaderstad is about 400km away in Canada. Not sure how much dealer support we should figure on but none of them will be able to give very quick help.

I don’t think us lot can comprehend “distance” in our pin pr*ck island called the United Kingdom, so thanks for mentioning the distances.
Off topic.
Hard question to answer, what might be an average farm size in you area whether organic or conventionally farmed. Is it a mainly crop growing , livestock or mixed farming area. Thankyou.

 

[pmartens07]

I don’t think us lot can comprehend “distance” in our pin pr*ck island called the United Kingdom, so thanks for mentioning the distances.
Off topic.
Hard question to answer, what might be an average farm size in you area whether organic or conventionally farmed. Is it a mainly crop growing , livestock or mixed farming area. Thankyou.

We are near the town of Penn Yan, NY which is on the north east branch of Keuka Lake. Our land base is from “Geneva” to “Dresden” (place names are sometimes amusing here as pretty much every family originally came from somewhere else). The land here is heavily glaciated and ranges from fairly level to extremely steep broken up by long narrow lakes. We farm largely along the shore of Seneca Lake which is over 200m deep in places and has not frozen since 1912. Most other lakes freeze hard enough to walk on and ice fish every winter.

Our area is unusual because of a strong Mennonite community that started moving here from southern Pennsylvania in the 1970s. The average farm size in our county is around 40Ha/100ac with 30-50 milking cows. We also have numerous small welding and woodworking shops from members of that community that have chosen not to farm. Travel 30km north or east you find much larger farms of 1200-4000Ha and 1000-2000 milk cows. West there is about 50km of rough country with little farming but after that the Genesee river valley starts opening up and that is very large scale grain and vegetable farming. We are the 2nd largest farm in our county with 1900ac/760Ha the largest being 2200ac/880Ha. There are several between 800 and 1200ac I don’t think there are more than 20 farms over 100ac in the whole county, probably 300+ that are the 100ac/40 cow range.

My parents were early to transition to organic, starting in 1992. The first 2 organic farms in the state are across Seneca lake from us and transitioned in 1976, they each are around 300Ha but neither has a next generation coming on. An interesting statistic that came out of a recent national census of ag is that California has the most total organic land, Wisconsin has the most organic farmers, and New York has the highest percentage of tillable land that is organic.

 

[T C]

Of all the "european" drills the Vaderstad Rapid is probably the most robust. They are versatile in the the conditions they will operate in. More suited to cultivated land and it needs to be firm. They will work well on heavier soils provided it is not too wet as they are quite heavy.
They are named Rapid for a reason, ideally 10 to 15 kph.
Design life of the frame is apparently 100,000 acres.

 

[pmartens07]

Does anyone have experience with the Great Plains centurion? We’ve used Great Plains drill for 20 years and have been happy with the openers.

 

[Boysground]

@pmartens07 you live in a lovely place, my son and I had a road trip around you a few years ago, he was looking at universities and we were driving between Toronto and Ithaca.

I have had 3 vaderstad drills over the last 25 years. The 1st one bought new was a 3m and I had it for 18 years, they definitely last. I’ve just bought a second hand 6m this year. Pull it with a Fendt 724 not heavy ground but some steep banks.

I can only repeat what everyone else says about them. Very reliable and over here there are many people making the wearing parts so you don’t necessarily need the dealer but vaderstad original parts do last a long time so I think are good value. In all the time I’ve had them I have only had to get a technician out a couple of times because of a problem that stopped me moving.

They are not keen on soft ground, if it’s bad I would tend to roll or press 1st and that usually solves the problem. I have had issues with small stones/flints getting caught between the disc and it’s leg which then stops the disc rotating and then it is a bull dozer. My 6m has 3 rows of coulters and no level board, I’ve not had the problem with this one, if you can I think this is the way to go. I have not blocked it yet.

You will soon learn what too wet is, you only un-bung an entire drill once. You can’t really go too fast if the conditions are right. Changing discs/coulters under the drill doesn’t happen often but is a pain.Keep some spare drill pipe on the shelf and if you have flints a spare wheel is useful. The aramid tyres are expensive but last much better than the standards.

Finally my drill has seed eye, it seems to be very accurate. My osr/canola was within 100g/ha this autumn, I just let it do it’s thing. I have no idea how reliable it will be in the long term.

The rapid is a great drill, they are still really popular here even if not as fashionable as they once were. My dealer seems to keep them as a stock item, which says a lot.

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[ollie989898]

Vaddy drill- the faster the better as you get more cultivation effect from the various elements out of it. Can't remember now but aren't the various bits designed to work progressively deeper from front to back ideally?

Need to watch the discs wearing out and not take too many liberties before changing them.

As with virtually any cultivator drill they can have a tendency to drill too deep in light/highly worked land- probably a by product of their size and weight rather than an actual design flaw and they won't be alone in that respect for sure as I've known other drills have the same issue.

I think farms that have replaced them have done so as fashioned change rather than because they were a bad design. They were ubiquitous in min-till systems for years only a switch toward direct drilling is what is tempting some farms away, bit like the Simba freeflow.

On a 936 would an 8 metre Vaddy be big enough? I don't know if they make a 9m. Horsch certainly do.

 

[Agriimark]

936 would cope fine with an 8 metre, only used the rapid but i know the spirit is 6,8 and 9m and is meant to be lighter and more versatile on lighter ground