Wide tyres, duals or tracks.

[Devil's advocate]

So on a not for profit basis ie you want to have the best crops in the area.

How should your tractor be kitted out to provide the best conditions for your seeds.

I plough, contractor power harrow drills & we have grass, veg & potatoes in the rotation. So really need to plough especially when we sell straw & import manure.

But I would love to try cereals, breakcrops & cover crops on a no till system with chopped straw & ultra low ground pressure. I'm sure it would work well with fodder radish doing the deep cutivations.

edit. I'm small scale & very eccentric my heaviest tractor weighs 3.6 tons.. But half tracks are now available for 80 hp tractors (and much smaller) so should almost float.

 

[David.]

Cheapest way is duals surely?
Correct tyres for plough, double them up to drill. Still puts more rubber down than sensible wides that can stay on year round, eg 650s.

 

[Devil's advocate]

Cheapest way is duals surely?
Correct tyres for plough, double them up to drill. Still puts more rubber down than sensible wides that can stay on year round, eg 650s.

Duals allowing side ways movement of the soil too. Sensible option of course to keep the tractor available for grain carting, delivering haylage etc.

 

[Devil's advocate]

That shows huge respect for the soil

Especially for farmers like me carting caulie, sprouts all winter no matter what the weather. Be ok rolling, spraying pre em & even moving sheep feeders.

 

[DrWazzock]

I have duals and terras here but duals are much more convenient and some say better than terras.

I often wonder though if they are a sticking plaster for a bad system. I find with zero till I need neither as the soil self structures and carries traffic as long as you are sensible about when you go on it.

For me you shouldn't need duals or terras if you haven't over loosened or worked the soil and if you keep off it when it's too wet. As is often the case, less is more.

 

[DrWazzock]

Beet harvesting through the winter is the biggest challenge here but have had some good crops of cereals following beet harvesting "compaction". Light land can be worse if it's too loose. Over loosened soil here in wet spring is fairly disastrous. Won't carry any traffic and slumps with rain. Better undisturbed hard but porous with worm holes.

 

[deleted user 837354]

The no-till system means that in time tracks and the like could become unnecessary. A lot of the direct drilling enthusiasts I have spoken to (and to some extent those doing min-till) will tell you that not practising deep tillage means the soil never has artificial pore spaces in it and so will travel well for a lot longer than land that has been pulled about- it isn't loose enough to really take wheelings to begin with.

I know a direct drilling man who will simply not drive on the land if it is wet. To him, if the autumn weather is too wet to direct drill, he won't do anything- he will opt for a spring crop instead with the same nonchalance as you would select a pair of socks. To walk away from a potential 4 tonne wheat crop like that would astonish a lot of people I know but not him. To him, the soil is as important as maximum yield; as many of us know too well, punish the soil one year and it gets revenge on you for the next three. Taken like that, you can sort of understand where someone from the no-till world might be coming from.

Not that easy with roots or veg etc in the runnings though I admit.

 

[Goffer]

Been drilling recently on land you rarely drill this time of year and without 900 tyres you would make a deeper wheelings turning on the headland and you can generally run ph very shallow not churning it too sh1te . Duals never was as good . Big tyres are a pain sometimes but if you direct the tools for the jobs you can usually have success .

 

[DrWazzock]

The no-till system means that in time tracks and the like could become unnecessary. A lot of the direct drilling enthusiasts I have spoken to (and to some extent those doing min-till) will tell you that not practising deep tillage means the soil never has artificial pore spaces in it and so will travel well for a lot longer than land that has been pulled about- it isn't loose enough to really take wheelings to begin with.

I know a direct drilling man who will simply not drive on the land if it is wet. To him, if the autumn weather is too wet to direct drill, he won't do anything- he will opt for a spring crop instead with the same nonchalance as you would select a pair of socks. To walk away from a potential 4 tonne wheat crop like that would astonish a lot of people I know but not him. To him, the soil is as important as maximum yield; as many of us know too well, punish the soil one year and it gets revenge on you for the next three. Taken like that, you can sort of understand where someone from the no-till world might be coming from.

Not that easy with roots or veg etc in the runnings though I admit.

I'd add that undisturbed land has drained faster here. Mintilled land to establish a failed OSR crop has laid much wetter. Tillage is like applying a layer of rendering to your soil. Seals it if you add water.

Not sure ploughing is quite the same. Cocked up furrows aren't a finely pulverised layer and if weathered down naturally and only lightly tickled into a seedbed are as good a man made structure as can be had.

 

[HarryB97]

Central tyre inflation and a vf tyre like the Trelleborg 1060 or Michelin ultraflex so you can change on the move from 6-16 psi and run at 40% lower pressures than standard tyres. No width issues and you have a very flexible machine in just a few minutes.

 

[Will 1594]

750 on front . 800 vf on back with a 380 105/50 vf dual , treads very light , no wheelings any where , all drilled up to behind beet and looking good apart from 2 acre , made a gadget to take them on and off with load all when move farms , and they go on front of low loader when move drill 20 mile to other end

 

[Brisel]

Buy the best quality VF tyres you can and use a weighbridge to measure axle weights for whatever mounted or trailed kit you have so you can set the tyre pressures according to the widely available pressure vs weight vs speed tables for each tyre.

Dual wheels are best for budget and flexibility (for changing during the day, week etc). Tracks are best but need careful ballasting. Tracks are very expensive and render the machine unusable for long periods during the year. Wide tyres are ok but you'll be ploughing on land and are a pain for row crop work.

No till would make the land carry weight better which gets around the problem but isn't really compatible with roots and vegetables.

 

[Devil's advocate]

Growing rice, is a very different experience to barley. Must need terraced level fields, even so, I wonder if the growers have to do a soil review. Not to mention issues with diffuse water pollution from ag chems

 

[Acke]

Use VF or IF wheels !

 

[Devil's advocate]

Buy the best quality VF tyres you can and use a weighbridge to measure axle weights for whatever mounted or trailed kit you have so you can set the tyre pressures according to the widely available pressure vs weight vs speed tables for each tyre.

Dual wheels are best for budget and flexibility (for changing during the day, week etc). Tracks are best but need careful ballasting. Tracks are very expensive and render the machine unusable for long periods during the year. Wide tyres are ok but you'll be ploughing on land and are a pain for row crop work.

No till would make the land carry weight better which gets around the problem but isn't really compatible with roots and vegetables.

I did have a very small scale dabble, with raised beds & not ploughing just tickling the beds with the bed former after sheep grazing. Amazing tilth with little effort. An infestation of nettles, stopped the trial. Perhaps I should have tried harder with ag chems to control the nettles? That was with a planned four year rotation of hand picked legumes, red beet, brassica & alliums

I've seen Australlian reserch on growing cereals on very wide raised beds, controlled traffic & bobbins on wheel rims to get combine & tractor on the same track width. May well have worked very well this year in the uk, expensive & complicated though.

 

[Clive]

modern flex sidewall tyres, central inflation system to run optimum pressures and CTF no till

if that’s not enough you shouldn’t be in the field at all

 

[Farmer Roy]

Zero till, CTF & the widest gear you can get / afford / justify, to minimise wheel tracks / passes


obviously, in full on CTF we wouldn’t run duals or wide tyres . . .

compact the sh!t out of your CTF wheel tracks every 12, 16, 18 or whatever metres, and NEVER drive on the rest

 

[Farmer Roy]

Obviously, it’s irrelevant what sort of tyres or tracks you run, if you have 3m passes you are going to be driving over / compacting a lot more land than if you have 12 m passes . . .

 

[ajd132]

for us doing no till on heavy soil, with some fair hills and 12m drills tracks can help just pull the things along as they are a dead weight. For our sins we currently have a quad track pulling a 12m horsch sprinter which is massive overkill most of the time but sometimes (especially in a season like this) the traction (not power) really helps. Saying that I’m looking at changing for one of the bigger conventional type tractors maybe a half trac or jd rx if someone is keen enough! The other problem where we differ from Clive in his lighter soils is we need to do quite a lot of mole draining which is a very expensive job if you get a contractor in and to do good amounts when the conditions are perfect a twin leg makes a big difference to output.

 

[Farmer Roy]

for us doing no till on heavy soil, with some fair hills and 12m drills tracks can help just pull the things along as they are a dead weight. For our sins we currently have a quad track pulling a 12m horsch sprinter which is massive overkill most of the time but sometimes (especially in a season like this) the traction (not power) really helps. Saying that I’m looking at changing for one of the bigger conventional type tractors maybe a half trac or jd rx if someone is keen enough! The other problem where we differ from Clive in his lighter soils is we need to do quite a lot of mole draining which is a very expensive job if you get a contractor in and to do good amounts when the conditions are perfect a twin leg makes a big difference to output.

you do zero till, full stubble retention, CTF, keep an eye on fungicide & insecticide use ( ie - try to avoid damaging soil biology / fungi as much as you can ), maybe add cover crops as well, you may find you don’t need to be mole draining in the future . . .