Olive grove. Crushing of pruning cuttings

As we commented in one of our post of last month, one of the tasks that we carried out in the olive grove over these last months has been the pruning, both on young olive trees and on those we have in full production. These pruning tasks on the olive trees in production are usually done every year, although one year we practice an aggressive pruning and the following year a much lighter pruning. This year we have not made a very aggressive pruning and therefore we have not gathered excessive amount of pruning cuttings. On the young olive trees we prune every year and the objective is very different, since its aim is to form the tree without removing too many leaves because you can't decompensate the relation leaf-root. On large olive trees, when pruning is done, we think it is best to cut with a chainsaw, so imagine the size of pruning cuttings that are usually generated.

In December we bought a second-hand iD-David crushing machine. The truth is that we had been looking for a crushing machine for months and we quite liked this one (iD-David is a very specialized Spanish company in machinery for woody crops). We bought it in Talleres Marsemar (Villarrobledo - Albacete) and we have used it a lot (both for crushing olive and almond tree pruning cuttings). We had a very good feeling when we worked with it. The crushing machine is the iD-David TD-SO and it requires a tractor of at least 120 HP as it needs power when starting... we use it with our Agrotron M600 (130 HP) and the tractor works really fine at 1,700 r.p.m. of engine and 490 r.p.m. of PTO...  the crushing machine suffers a lot when many wood cuttings come in, especially wood of almond.

The aim of crushing the branches is to be able to incorporate these pruning remains into the soil because the pieces of wood end up decomposing and being incorporated into the soil as organic matter. We think this could be a very good choice for the olive grove and almond trees. Moreover, in Andalusia, the crushing of branches has been done for many years and the results are very positive.

Versión en español.

The vegetable garden 2020

One of the tasks that begins when spring arrives, especially with the month of May, is the work in the vegetable garden. Having a vegetable garden is a hobby that our father loves as it allows him to enjoy himself a natural environment. However, this hobby requires a lot of time because there are many and varied tasks to perform. The vegetable garden provides us with fresh vegetables from July until September, so we practice the consumption of proximity and have fresh products of maximum quality throughout the summer.

We have now carried out tasks of soil preparation and planting. As you can see in our pictures, the soil has been prepared with the cultivator. Besides, a good dose of manure has been poured to help the plants grow quickly and the metal structure (cage) has been installed, there the plants will be supported when they grow (especially the tomato plants). After that, we have planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins, etc. The next tasks will be to set up the irrigation system and to continue planting other types of vegetables.

We will update the post as we do the different tasks and the plants grow... if anyone wants to try the products, we'll be waiting for you here.

Versión en español.

Mowing days

The farms in those areas where there are cattle (goats, sheep, cows,...) have been in full activity for a few weeks to mow the fodder that they will later be used to feed the animals. On this occasion, our friends César Rivera (from Calera y Chozas - Toledo) and José Vicente (Cuenca) have sent us some photos of their mowing and baling work... the common factor that joins them is the Pöttinger Novacat mower. The mower used by José Vicente is the Novacat 351 Alpha-Motion and César's equipment is more complete because he has a front mower and a rear mower suspended. José Vicente has the farm only a few kilometres from the city of Cuenca, so going there and seeing the mower working with the beautiful city of Cuenca on the horizon is a luxury that not many people can enjoy these days.

The work with this type of machine is quite fast. Regarding to José Vicente overview, the working speed is 18 km/h (in alfalfa, vetch or pulse vegetables in general) and 15 km/h in oats or triticale ... therefore, you can mow about 30 ha in a working day with the mower of 3.5 meters working width. The mower is adjusted in a floating position and it is also adapted perfectly to the ground. If the field is well prepared so that there are no stones, you can enjoy mowing at high speed. The mower works at 1,000 r.p.m. PTO and has a speed multiplier that allows the discs to work in perfect conditions with a very large crop flow. At the high working speed we have mentioned and working the blades at ground level, the cut is perfect.

The roller conditioner can also be incorporated, which in the case of alfalfa allows us to make a much faster dehydration. If the roller conditioner is used it can be baled in about 2 days (when the forage has less than 15º of humidity). If the roller conditioner is not used, the wait can be up to a week. This is the case with oats, which the mowing is already done with some grain, in order not to crush the grain, the roller conditioner is not activated.

In future articles we will show you how these forages are used to feed the animals... We're sure it will be very interesting.

Versión en español.

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