Dale Eco Drill

[Banana Bar]

First Dale Drill in Denmark arrived here today. Like the first Dale Drills with Seed Hawk openers.
When I have evaluated all possible drill solutions, the Seed Hawk opener gets highest score. Disc drills won't survive long in this soil here with a lot of flint stones (from next year I will check the Weaving GD drill for the next 3 harvests, but I know the costs will be high). Dale offers the only real fertilizer placement: a little to the side and a little deeper than the seed, so the roots will seek the fertilizer. 25 cm row spacing and excellent depth control on each row and flexible choices of granular fertilizer. Phosphorus in liquid fertilizers is double price as DAP here, this means 25£/ha savings in the future.
6m drill can be pulled by <150 hp.
Well - lets see how it goes!

Demoing an Eco Drill this autumn, why do you prefer the seedhawk tine over the current Dale assembly?

BB

 

[SorenIlsoe]

Demoing an Eco Drill this autumn, why do you prefer the seedhawk tine over the current Dale assembly?

BB

In UK you are not using placed fertilizer as we are here. All spring barley and all WOSR has fertilizer placed. A lot of WW gets some DAP also.
As I see the Eco Drill used, it is almost always as a 12,5 cm seed drill. The metal closing wheel is running exactly on each row - so if you move the front tine to a narrow position (as I understand you still can do?) so it runs a little to the left of the last tine, then what has the closing wheel to do still running alone in the left side pressing a seed row that is not existing? Then the steel closing wheel should be changed to a real wheel like the Seed Hawk.
Also - as standard there is no difference in the openers. The fertilizer opener in the original Seed Hawk design has another design than the seed opener, and it runs deeper.
As I understand, it should be possible to get all these thing on the Eco Drill - but I never see it? Why?
There has been no used Eco Drills for sale with these fittings, and I have to buy a used 6m because else it will be overkill in the investment contra area. I need a 6m drill to be able to runs slowly and prevent soil throwing from the tines.
Also this is a test to see if the system is the right one and how yields will be and how the switch to granular fertilizer from liquid will work.
IF it will be a success, then the next step in some years could be a Eco drill fitted like I would like it.