English
Seminars on arable crop production make the Mason Kings open evenings a 'must attend' event
Mason Kings open evenings are now firmly on the calendar as becoming a ‘must attend' for local farmers and contractors in the south-west. With evenings held recently at both their Dulverton depot in the north and the Chudleigh depot to the south, the company displayed a fine array of modern farming tackle from grass sward management equipment, through to ploughs and cultivators, arable crop establishment tackle and also spreading and spraying kit.
With an interest slant on normal dealer open evening formats, the Mason Kings team laid on seminar sessions for interested farmers and contractors with these seminars focusing on both grassland management and arable crop production. On the grassland management side, Amazone took part in the seminar with a brief overview of their range of fertiliser spreaders that are applicable to the dairy farmer and what those machines can do to improve the efficiency of those businesses. Nigel Jones, territory manager for Amazone Ltd in the south west ran through the salient points as to how bigger hopper sizes, wider working widths and the use of electronics to control fertiliser application rates more accurately all play a major part in helping get a better utilisation of grassland fertiliser application.
Howard Moore, local agronomist with UAP, provided the arable session with some useful pointers in helping make that decision as to whether to continue ploughing or switch to a min-till approach to cereal establishment. Better quality seedbeds, decreased slug activity levels and an increase in soil organic matter were all mooted as being plus points towards a min-till regime. However, the use of stale seedbeds was paramount in gaining the ability to maximise mechanical weed control. Mr. Moore went on to say ‘The options for chemical control, especially over bromes and blackgrass, which we have in the armoury still, are sadly being depleted and so we need to look at mechanical means of reducing the weed bank in cereal production’. Crop rotation also will begin to play an even greater roll in the ability to reduce competition in cereals from grass weeds.
Simon Brown, product manager for Amazone Ltd took the gathered farmers on a tour of the Cenius mulch cultivator and the AD-P pneumatic power harrow drill combi on display where it was explained the importance of straw distribution and the need to cultivate only as deep as necessary; ‘The art of good straw distribution starts on the combine where it imperative to get a good even spread over the full header width of both straw and chaff. The chop length of straw needs to be less than around 4” as we need to make sure there is only one node on each piece to get the maximum rotting effect to take place’. Simon Brown continued on 'An initial, shallow cultivation with the Catros compact disc harrow makes sure we get the best disturbance of chaff, weed seeds and volunteer grains and forms some good seed/soil contact. This, coupled with the level of seedbed moisture found in the stubble just post combining, gets those seeds of to the best start and so a quick zap off with glysophate means that we can proceed with the secondary, deeper cultivation in the knowledge that we have controlled that initial flush of weeds as best as we can. Too deep a cultivation, too early, loses the impact of this control method and that means that we are more in the hands of costly chemical controls later on'.
Also on show was the AD-P pneumatic power harrow drill combination. Combis are increasingly being shunned as a means of high output cereal establishment but Simon Brown went on to point out that, with modern Amazone drill combis, the work rates have been considerably improved. Soil flow through both the power harrow - by trough, rotor speed, tine and levelling board design - and the drill, with new coulter systems that utilise single disc coulters with added coulter pressure, has been optimised to enable these units to travel at speeds of up to 15 kph. This has resulted in some users achieving 60 acres a day with a 3m combi and so makes this still a serious option when considering a new drilling system.
As is the norm at these sorts of do’s, the hospitality was first class, with an excellent hog roast on offer and a friendly atmosphere amongst customers, suppliers and the Mason Kings staff alike, although this was maybe fuelled by the festive mulled wine and mince pies! A ‘not to be missed’ diary date for 2011 then?