17.01.05 - AQUEELY GOOD FINISH!
Quality vegetable production requires a quality seedbed – and farm manager David Carr has found nothing that finishes off a seedbed better than Simba’s Aqueel roller.
David is farm manager for Marshalls of Butterwick, based just to the East of Boston, Lincolnshire. The company grows some 2,500 acres of vegetable crops on fields spread between Wainfleet and Holbeach.
Crops grown include cauliflowers, broccoli, all types of cabbage and Brussels sprouts – as well as a range of niche crops, with planting running from February through to September:
“Cultivations for all these crops are fairly intense, and tailored to soil type. On the better toft land we might power harrow once just ahead of the planter. On the more bodied land we might cultivate two or three times.
“The last cultivation is done with a power harrow with an Aqueel roller mounted behind it. This provides the right amount of consolidation on a range of soil types, while also leaving a lattice of divots impressed in the soil. They perform two roles, holding rainwater where it falls so it is of optimum benefit to the crop and protecting lighter soils against wind erosion”.
Both of these issues of growing importance thanks to the introduction of “cross compliance” in the reformed CAP.
He currently has Aqueels fitted behind two power harrows, and will have them fitted behind the estate’s other three as they are replaced in the next few years. They use either seven or ten row planters, which destroys part of the divot pattern, but not those between the rows. They are important in helping the new crop:
“When it rains, the water falls into those divots, so it is actively moved away from around the plant stems, and has time to percolate into the soil, so that it is available to the plants as their root systems develop.
“They are durable enough to survive until the first inter-row weeding, so they are effective for the sensitive period of crop establishment. We do not use irrigation, so we need to make best use of the rainfall we get, and the Aqueel certainly helps that”.
Because the roller is mounted on the back of the power harrow, it is far more compact, making it more manoeuvreable in the field and easier to move between fields, something they do frequently as they prepare land ahead of planting:
“Very often the trailed roll would press the land tighter than we really wanted, which was a problem. With the Aqueel being rubber it firms the soil effectively without packing it down too hard. It leaves it stabilised, but able to breathe and absorb water. In addition it runs very clean even when the soils are slightly moist.
“It is the only piece of machinery which works throughout the season. The first model has done three seasons and the second one two. They both do around 1,200 acres/year and they are proving very durable, with very little wear showing at all”.