Starting a new campaing of cereals and legumes harrowing stubble

Last week, we started to harrow our stubble. This task is done in summer to prepare fields where we are going to sow cereals or legumes in next campaign (we are going to plough in December with our plough discs other fields where we are going to sow sunflowers). Despite the fact that it hasn't rained and the weather forecast says it won't rain in next days, weeds have begun to rise, so we have to harrow fields now. Next time to perform the horrowing task it will be about October after the first autumn rains.

We use our old La Forjadora chissel of 30x70cm of 13 rows for this task. Our Gil cultichissel, of 19 rows, doesn't work very fine with these soil conditions because the soil is extremely strong. Besides, La Forjadora chissel has double spring and it is really ready to do this job...it is working very fine. The working depth is not very big (about 15cm), the reason is that we don't want to generate a lot of lumps. I think a good idea could be having a rear roller in our chissel. We are using new cultivators because chissel can work in strong soils. Our Agrotron M600 works perfectly at 7km/h and 1,500r.p.m.. It has a magnificent cab which has a good air conditioning so our job is very confortable even with high temperature in summer. The dust is a big problem in summer for these tasks in Spain, then we have to clear our filters everyday if we want our tractor can work like a Swiss watch.

As you can see in our video and pictures, we don't work with the same direction used for sowing cereal. With this system we achieve a better harrowing and we can spread better our straw residues. 

Joaquín y Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)

Another garlic job: cutting small bulbs

At this time, we have to cut small bulbs which are produced by garlic. Nowadays, their are not usesful because picking up them to be sold isn't worth. Few years ago, we sold them but nowadays they don't have good sale. You can find them in supermarket easily. They are frozen, cut pieces of 3cm and mixed with other vegetables like asparagus. They have a strong taste and they are used to cook omelettes in Spain, for example.

These stems are cut before haversting garlic (when they are sold we have to cut and harvest them manually and they are stored in bags of 20kg). In this case, we have to cut them again after garlic harvesting, because these bulbs continue growing as they are fed from garlic, so this can affect to size of garlic negatively because they reduce the garlic thickness.

As you can see in our pictures, we use two type of mower: a central mower and lateral mower. The central mower is more confortable to use it before garlic harvesting (specially if we have a fix system water in our field). When garlic are located in scores after harvesting, we use a lateral mower which allow us to cut these stems without problems (we have to work in two sides of scores).

You can see a video in our YouTube channel.

Joaquín y Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)

Bread wheat. Other harvesting day

We finished harvesting our wheat and triticale a few days ago. It is always after harvesting barley. This season was not great for wheat or triticale, because May and June were very dry and wheat and triticale need to be watered before its dry for harvesting. In spite of this, we had an average of bread wheat about 3,000kg/ha and an average of triticale about 2,500kg/ha.

We show you a few pictures of Claas Lexion 540 (you can see me too :), of course) and a video I took with my cell phone.

Joaquín y Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)