12 February 2013

The first step to get the best sunflowers

Last January, we started to prepare the next sunflower campaign. Preparing an extraordinary fallow will be an important key if we want to get a good crop. Clearly, if we do a great job at the beginning, costs will be also reduced until we are going to sow our sunflowers.

A remarkable detail is the sowing date which will be in mid-April, so soils can raise a lot of weeds until that moment if fields aren't ploughed correctly. This means that if we don't perform a deep work in January, we will have to work few times more during February and March with chissel plough or mini plough. We chose to use discs plough, which allows us to do a large tumbling of the soil (with a working depth over 25cm) and we won't have to work it again till a few days before sowing, when we are going to harrow it with our chissel plough.

According to the discs plough used works very fine. It is an old tool manufactured by Paris Brothers (they closed their factory, which was in our Village, several years ago), but it continues working stupendously. This tool is auto-cleaning, so that we don't have any problem with our sticky soil. For the same reason, we cann't use a conventional plough. The Agrotron works without problems at 1,500 r.p.m. and at 8.5 km/h. The working width is of 2.5m so this task is slow.

As you can see in our pictures, we also used our mini plough with our John Deere in fields where we cannot carry out that working depth. The tillage achieved is absolutely different in respect of the tillage achieved by discs plough, so in these fields we are going to work few time more with chissel plough.

Versión en español.

Video:
Pictures:

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous12/2/13 21:07

    I have seen this post really interesting from the point of view of the results. At this moment, the majority of people do not find this task neccessary but, as you have said, the crope can improve considerably.

    I like farming and the fields but I am not a profesional and I love reading your post weekly.
    I would like to remark the different colours of the soil in your fantastic photographs.

    Thanks ...

    Esta semana encuentro el post realmente interesante desde el punto de vista de los resultadoa que se obtendrán pues la cosecha puede mejorar considerablemente aunque la mayoría no podamos apreciar la labor que se realiza ahora.

    Me encanta el campo pero no soy un profesional de él y por ello me encanta leer el post semanal.

    Me gustaría mencionar que me ha sorprendido los diferentes colores de la tierra antes y después del trabajo.

    Gracias
    MCC

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    1. Thanks for your comments and thanks for following us!!

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  2. Hay que ver lo bien que lo deja esos discos.
    Un saludo.

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  3. Anonymous15/2/13 23:23

    labrais antes de pasar los discos?

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    1. Normalmente no, pero en la parcela donde están hechas las fotos, tenía mucha hierba en verano y le dimos una pasada de chisel.
      Si te fijas en las fotos del John Deere con los vernetes, está el rastrojo completo.

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  4. Anonymous20/2/13 16:50

    Veo que eres de los pocos que quedan con los platos tradicionales, por aqui nosotros andamos con unos de 7 de Garcia Hoyos. Es curioso encontrar en internet este tipo de apero en peligro de extincion y solo utilizado por estos lares. Mira los italianos como antan Twins-Farm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AO_b5Fcs48

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    1. Interesante video!! Muchas gracias por tu comentario

      Parece que los platos son más pequeños que los que usamos por aquí, no?

      Antiguamente estos aperos también eran suspendidos, pero como te comento, con platos más pequeños.

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