​For fertilizer or herbicide... Tecnis: a good option

Last year, we published a post about the twin brothers César and Raúl fertilizing and weeding out outsourced jobs. On this occasion, they sent us some pictures about their new Tecnoma Tecnis 4500 sprayer. It has a working width of 28 meters and it is absolutely managed by computer and GPS system... the sprayer is pretty nice.

As you can see in our pictures, they have a front tank of 1,500 litters what offers them a large autonomy (6,000 litters), so they can work large fields without refilling the sprayer. When they work with LAC 6-10-4 fertilizer and a doses of 258 l/ha (300kg), the autonomy is of 23ha. When they work with herbicide (200 l/ha), the autonomy is of 30ha. Also, the sprayer has installed an automatic section control system by GPS but it is not still integrated with the Trimble automatic steering system that is installed on their Massey Ferguson 6485 (you can see in their pictures, there are two GPS receivers)... they will have to improve these configuration.

We recommend you to visit the next edition of Demoagro farm fair in May... you will be able to test these sprayers on the field.

Versión en español.

Joaquín Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)

Spraying sunflowers

​A few days ago, we visited our friend Virgilio in his Village (Turégano - Segovia). That is an area where there are lots of sunflowers because they think sunflowers are an excellent cultivation for crop rotation. In our area, there are many sunflowers too (Cuenca is the biggest producer area of sunflower in Spain), so we liked so much seeing him working with his Tecnoma Xenis sprayer and his healthy sunflowers fields. They use so much slurry therefore they have to spray frequently. 

In our area, sunflowers aren't sprayed and fertilized, we only sow them in May, and after two months they are harrowed (we kill some weed with this task), finally they are harvested in October. On the other hand, Virgilio expends more resources and time then his profit is more positive (besides in his area, it often rains in summer and it is a good help to get a great production... they have an average of 1,300kg/ha). Another fact to be considered is that as we indicated in our post about sowing sunflowers, they give ​less distance between rows since our rows are at 80cm and theirs at 60cm only. 

Versión en español.

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Joaquín Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)

Fertilizer and herbicide for after sowing

Firstly, we would like to wish a happy new year 2014 for our followers, contributors, friends,... We hope the blog will continue improving thanks to your help, comments, pictures, etc.

Our friend Alberto Barrio sent us some pictures about his fertilizer tasks he carried out after sowing. The fertilizer used was 8-10-7 with 5% PHC (it was mixed with prevention herbicide to avoid problems with wide leaf weed in the next months). The fertilizer dose was of 250kg/ha and with the rains of these days (it has been raining for 15 days) he hopes the sprouting will be optimal.

The sprayer used is a Tecnoma of 2,500 litres and 24 metres of working width. Therefore, this task was done in a reduced time (the working speed was of 9km/h). As you can see in the pictures, they are using a Trimble EZ-Pilot autoguidance system (with CFX-750 display). According to Albertos' comments, the sprayer and autoguidance system (through GPS) accuracy is very high, since they used exactly the same estimated quantity of fertilizer litres as they have calculated previously to starting the task.

Versión en español.

Joaquín y Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)