Sumo DD Spring Drilling

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Many thanks to all of you that came to see us at the Sumo stand at Cereals, we've had a busy few days and a massive amount of interest in our new products including the new DD, so thank you to all those that took the time to have a look, and for the hundreds of enquiries we received for it, and all of our other range of equipment.
From my point of view it was great to get opinions and feed back on the new DD which is always hugely important to us, and to see so much interest in what we are trying to achieve with it. The working demo plots worked well in showing off the DD and DTS, and I was pleased that the 'drilling' of the wood pellets was a success as it gave you a good idea of seed placement in real time conditions. I know the ground was not exactly ideal with it being very light and dry, but I think drilling an area and leaving it for people to have a scratch about behind the drilling was favourable to turning our demo plot into some kind of dessert storm recreation!:rolleyes:
Still not sure about the sowing rate on wood pellets though. Anyone?!

View attachment 164900

View attachment 164898

View attachment 164916

Although we now have a lot of DD demo enquiries to work through this Autumn, we will have our 6m DD for the North and East and also @Johndeere will have a 6m DD for the South and South West, so there is still a good opportunity to see these drills working on your farm. We will also be putting the 3m into the ground after this summer's show season, so please get in touch if you wish to see any of these machines working by either contacting us at [email protected] or through myself or @Johndeere.
I would especially be interested in anyone with green cover/cover crops we could have a go in please.


Also a big thank you to Scrutons and Louth Tractors for the lend of the demo tractors and to Dave Franciosy for his massive selfie stick!!
View attachment 164912

ATB, Marv.(y)


Marv, if your anywhere near us this autumn with a LDS I would like to see one run on our soils please
 

MDA

Member
Trade
We drilled grass and clover mix into some paddocks for a local farmer yesterday. The fields had a cut of haylage last week then sprayed off with roundup and dursban the day before drilling.

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We set the coulter pressure to 3/4 full and had to adjust the covering wheels to bring them closer to the slot. I've pulled the grass back here to expose the slot

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Found this leatherjacket so hopefully the dursban will work.

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We set the sowing depth to 15mm and forward speed to 7kmh. Probably could have gone quicker, but at this speed it looked to be making a good job so we left it at that.

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Tractor was showing 6ltrs/ha fuel use. This 230 hp JD is too big for the drill, and is soon going to get replaced with a smaller unit for this autumns demos, so it will be interesting to see if fuel consumption is lower.



Marv
 

MDA

Member
Trade
Big as in too heavy I maybe should have said, though I don't think @Rob340 was going for a speed record when he was with you! More focussed on doing a good job I would think.
We've had the drill on smaller tractors with no problem. [emoji4]
 
How did the DD sumo drilled crops perform then James?

Just looking at the yield map funnily enough. Combined it last night. Yield not amazing overall - too low a plant population overall due to not high enough seed rate and we were late on the first fungicide which let septoria in. Didn't do an earwash fungicide and that left it a bit dirty near the end. Generally a not very good field though. Probably about the 4-7 t/ha mark (i.e. quite variable) with a rough 5 t/ha average.That said the two other spring wheat fields we had which were Claydon drilled about four days earlier into nicer meadow soil were around the 7-8 t/ha mark with the same chem timings. Crop was only just fit.

As for the difference between the Claydon and Sumo area there wasn't as much difference as we were expecting - it wasn't night and day between the two. Combine driver said he couldn't see that much difference on the screen in the good bits of both. Claydon was more patchy which I think would give a lower average yield. Just trying to decipher the MF telemetry data - blooming software is malfunctioning slightly. One comment was that the Sumo area was a noticeably cleaner for weeds (particularly BLWs). Whether that is just a function of the row spacing I'm not sure. One other comment is how well this field traveled - it's been direct drilled for two years and we didn't drill in tramlines and I couldn't find the tramlines in the dark which is a good sign.

Need to peer at the data a bit more before really deciding.
 

Andrew K

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Essex
Thanks, will be interesting to see how the different no till disc drills go in the wet this autumn?A neighbour has bought a Weaving GD apparently, close to the Cross slot
 
Thanks, will be interesting to see how the different no till disc drills go in the wet this autumn?A neighbour has bought a Weaving GD apparently, close to the Cross slot

And how have they gone, Andrew?

Saw the Sumo working on some of our neighbour's ground today. One field into min-tilled land and another into wheat stubble. Drill performed OK in the min-tilled ground which was a bit tacky. Vaddy would have done better, but then that's hardly surprising. Neighbour thought they might have to tickle the top to make sure all of the seed was covered.

I was impressed though with how it went on the stubble. There was a fair covering of straw which had been quite finely chopped and cut quite low. The clay underneath was still pretty wet and sticky. The drill though seemed to go fine. A little bit of mud picking up on the press wheels but nothing major and the seed nicely placed in the slot cutting through the straw well. There was a little bit of straw tucked into some of the slots, but to my untrained eye it didn't look that bad. Will be interesting to see how the crop comes up. I think these are the sort conditions that I'd want a drill to work in (in terms of wetness) and my hunch is that a 750a might have filled the guauge wheels with mud in these conditions.

There was a demo Dale sat in their yard which they're trying on the other half of the wheat stubble tomorrow which should be interesting to watch.

Min-tilled bit (not entirely representative as this was a shaded headland):
2015-10-12 14.48.18.jpg


Wheat stubble:
2015-10-12 15.07.18.jpg


Sorry, photos are carp.
 

Andrew K

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Essex
James,
Have spoken to the GD owner who seemed happy with it, but had approx 2ton of added ballast IIRC to get penetration[3m mounted] when it was drier.
Had used it in DD and tilled situations.Not spoken to Graham since he first used X slot, but i hear its doing a good job from others.
 

Simon Chiles

DD Moderator
And how have they gone, Andrew?

Saw the Sumo working on some of our neighbour's ground today. One field into min-tilled land and another into wheat stubble. Drill performed OK in the min-tilled ground which was a bit tacky. Vaddy would have done better, but then that's hardly surprising. Neighbour thought they might have to tickle the top to make sure all of the seed was covered.

I was impressed though with how it went on the stubble. There was a fair covering of straw which had been quite finely chopped and cut quite low. The clay underneath was still pretty wet and sticky. The drill though seemed to go fine. A little bit of mud picking up on the press wheels but nothing major and the seed nicely placed in the slot cutting through the straw well. There was a little bit of straw tucked into some of the slots, but to my untrained eye it didn't look that bad. Will be interesting to see how the crop comes up. I think these are the sort conditions that I'd want a drill to work in (in terms of wetness) and my hunch is that a 750a might have filled the guauge wheels with mud in these conditions.

There was a demo Dale sat in their yard which they're trying on the other half of the wheat stubble tomorrow which should be interesting to watch.

Min-tilled bit (not entirely representative as this was a shaded headland):
View attachment 221644

Wheat stubble:
View attachment 221642

Sorry, photos are carp.

Those conditions don't look like the sort that would fill the gauge wheels on a 750. It needs to be sticking to your boots and tyres of the drilling tractor. In reality conditions that you shouldn't really be drilling in if you have any respect for your soil.
 

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quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

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