A Novice and his Aitchison Grassfarmer.

[Macsky]

Picked it up today, it’s a 2014, any peculiar characteristics that I’d be better knowing before starting?

what kind of depth are you wanting the slots when going into thick old mat?

 

[adam_farming]

Well we had a learning experience this weekend. First go out with the Aitchison.
Plan was to drill 3 fields:
2x ex wheat, chopped straw, not touched since the combine except roundup.
1x ex spring beans. Bit of weed trash including a lot of fair sized knotgrass.

Set off into the first field, got about 10m and this happened:
View attachment 1141383

Wet mat of straw just wouldn't flow through.

No problem I thought, I'll go in the ex bean field. Same problem except it was the knotgrass and other trash just wrapping around the tines.
Ended up getting the pigtail and discs back out, cultivating the field and drilling it. Was still getting the knotgrass blocking and being dumped on the headland but at least we've got 1 out of 3 fields drilled, and in fairly good order for the most part.
A neighbour offered to come and Terrastar the 2 ex wheat field but I went and tried the drill into one of his terrastarred fields and it still bulldozed the straw.

Ultimately I think the tines are just too close to allow a lot of loose trash through, wet or dry.

Plan now is to cultivate the fields as I did before having the Aitchison.

Learning points for next year:

Get roundup on ASAP after bean harvest to kill any knotgrass before it gets too big.
Consider baling wheat straw, OR
Consider taking out every other tine, which would make 250mm row spacings and allow trash to flow through, OR
Would moving the straw soon after the combine with some sort of rake/short disc machine do enough to start the straw breaking up?

All things to think about and learn from.

Put this in the Simtech thread by mistake. Not the best maiden voyage with the Aitchison unfortunately, plenty of thinking to do this winter.

 

[aangus]

View attachment 1118541

I'm excited to have finally joined the Aitchison Club! Already had a couple of enquiries for drilling stewardship seed plots, and will be planting grass this summer, wheat in the autumn, then spring beans next year.
To solve the marker issue I'm looking at AgOpen GPS autosteer, or if I can't get my head around that then one of the off the shelf solutions like FJ Dynamics.

If you don't mind me asking what sort of money is this machine please?