Estero wheat & two siamese seed drills

In the farm, where we have sowed our garlic this campaing, our friend Sergio Castillo ​works. ​After sowing our garlic, we spent a morning with him... it was very funny and we could see their machinary.

He was sowing R1 estero wheat. ​The w​hole production is going to be ​used as seed​ for ​the next year. The field, where he sowed this wheat, has a water system (they have ​this system on all fields of this farm), so they hope to have a yield of 8,000kg/ha. He used a dose of seed of 300kg/ha (we used 210kg/ha for our rainfed fields). We would like to take a video and pictures to publish a post when he is going to harvest it with their new Fendt combine.

We​ really​ liked ​their​ two siamese Solano-Horizonte seed drills (they are linked by a homemade gadget... the working width is of 7m (it is a way ​of having a cheap large seed drill). The problem of this gadget ​appears ​when they need to transport it, s​ince​ they have to put it on a trailer, but as they work in ​only one​ farm, they ​avoid traffic ​problems ​into the farm, so th​e​ problem ​doesn't exist. Also we liked so much ​the ​John Deere 7430 Premium... ​his engine ​sound is spectacular. Sergio told us they normally don't sow with this tractor (it is too large) because he spends too much time ​o​n headers, but he doesn't have ​an​other this year. On the other hand, the working speed was high (over 10km/h using B3 gear), ​then he could sow an important number of hectares using a sort time.

Versión en español.

Video:

 
Pictures:

Joaquín y Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)

Garlic: Mechanical planter

As we told in the last post, we have to speak about J.J.Broch mechanical garlic planter, which is our planter. About this machinery we have published more posts previously e.g. last year, as you can see from here. As you can notice in our new video, the problem about noise has been solved because this planter gets cloves of garlic through teaspoons instead of air turbine like La Preferia precision garlic airplanter. In return and if you observe our video, it is possible cloves are not put on soil with so many accuracy... Although, we are really geting very good results with this planter and we achieve to put on the soil about 10 cloves per metre. Anyway, the comparison is not 100% accurate because the working speed was not identical. We are going to carry out this study more carefully in the next year... we are going to publish it for you. 

In our area and we guess in Spain in general, the most used garlic planter is the mechanical one, mainly because the price is lower. According to that, our friend Espejo has told us (from Chinchón) that in his area (which is another very important area regarding Spanish garlic production) the majority of farmers are using mechanical planters as well. We are waiting comments of other farmers and other areas of Spain and why not from other countries about their garlic planter jobs and about differences and feelings between mechanical and pneumatic garlic planters.

Versión en español.

Video about precision garlic airplanter:

Video about mechanical garlic planter:

Pictures:

Joaquín y Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)