This year, the farm replaced its tried and trusted 20-year-old Vicon twin disc weigh-cell spreader with the very latest high-flow Kverneland Exacta TLX GEOSPREAD Disc Spreader model, supplied by UK supplier Clarke & Pulman, raising the bar further.
Along with his wife Margaret and sons Matt and Chris, the Websters farm around 600 acres. In addition to potatoes, their rotation includes winter and spring wheat, winter and spring oats, fodder beet, and grass.
For Andrew Webster, the Kverneland Exacta TLX GEOSPREAD Disc Spreader has delivered several key benefits:
- 60% more flow capacity, allowing the spreader to handle the farm's high application rates without compromising accuracy
- Increased forward speed from 11kph to 16kph, resulting in much higher output and capacity
- MULTIRATE: The ability to split rates and use multiple spread widths to ensure even coverage, particularly important on challenging coastal lands
“We’ve gone full section control with auto start/stop while gaining a huge amount of flow that can easily cope with our high application rates on potatoes,” explains Andrew Webster, pictured, of Hollin House Green Farm, Lancashire, England.
“There’s around 60% more flow from the Kverneland Exacta TLX GEOSPREAD Disc Spreader with no reduction in accuracy,” he says. “And where I was previously limited to 11kph, my forward speed with the Kverneland fertiliser Spreader is now around 16kph, which means much more output and more capacity with lighter rates.”
Application rates can be as high as 1,200kg/ha, with Mr. Webster taking a specific approach to dosing potato seedbeds. “We’re close to the coast, so onshore winds can be challenging,” he says. “So, I split the rate and use two spread widths to ensure I get as even a level of coverage as possible.” “The first pass can be up to 600kg at 24m, then the second pass is made at the 12m-mark, to fill in better. It works really well at headlands, leaving a very even dose.”
The spreader is used with an IsoMatch Tellus Go+ terminal, allowing it to be operated on several of the farm’s Massey tractors without requiring additional unlock codes for tractor terminals.
“The Kverneland Exacta TLX GEOSPREAD Disc Spreader is a future-proofed purchase, which has already led us to adopt variable rate spreading with combinable crops,” he says.
