Sowing Sunflowers

Long cycle sunflowers are normally sowed in April to allow us to harvest them in September. We could have a big problem if it rains during the following days after sowing because the soil may harden which hinders seeds to be born. If we had this problem, we would have to sow them again. Last days of April it was raining so we started to sow them in the first days of May. We are within time to sow them and I hope it doesn’t rain in the next few days.

As you can see in our pictures, seeds are smaller this year, so we had to change the dishes. New dishes have 10 holes of 12x6mm (old dishes have 10 holes too but of 14x7mm). Sowing is the same with these dishes: we have same speed, same distance between rows (it is 72cm)  and same distance between seeds(it is 26cm); if we change bigger sprockets we can get a distance between seeds of 30cm. We avoid sowing two seeds together with these dishes.

We use a JJ Broch mechanical sower with four rows. In my area, it is the most common mechanism and it really works very fine. We used 3kg of seeds per hectare.

About seeds, they are a hybrid of Arlesa company. It is called Almanzor and we have always got good crops with this type of seeds.


You can watch a video from here: Video

Joaquín y Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)

Irrigation

We are watering from April (or after that if year is dry) to the last days in June. In general, Spain is an enough dry country and specially my area, so few crops, as garlic, need watering to produce good harvest. In my area, we mainly water garlic, but few farmers water cereals too. That is not very common because the diesel price is high and cereals price is low, then the result don't worth. Fortunately, it is possible with garlic. We use electric energy instead of diesel for watering, the advantages are: costs are slightly lower so we try to water garlic weekly with irrigations about four hours.

As you can see in my pictures, we use different watering systems. In my opinion, the best is sprinkler, although it isn't always available because you have to do strong work to move the pipe every time. We are lucky on this way because we have installed our watering system underground in all fields and we don't need to move our pipes for watering. The control for different sections of watering system is managed by computer and we can manage it by sms. Before, we used hose reels (We had Ocmis R4 and Irrifrance Optima hose reels). These hose reels have a mini computer which can get a big accuracy about working speed, working distance, times, ... . In my opinion, this tool waters worse than sprinkler but you can water easily because you use tractor alone to move hose reels.

You can watch a video from here: Video

Joaquín y Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)