“We’d never done our own drilling before, and I’ve been surprised by how easy it has been to set up and use the Kverneland ts-drill seeder,” explains David Pineo of JD & JM Pineo and Partners, Laurel Farm, Edingworth, England. “From drilling cover crops after maize, I’ve now progressed to sowing our own wheat and barley, plus a peas-and-barley mix for whole crop.”
"I really like what the Kverneland ts-drill tine seeder has done so far," he says. “When you input the seed type into the Focus 3 control box, it tells you what seed rollers to use – it’s very straightforward and very accurate.”
Supplied by Read Agri Services, the 48-row Kverneland ts-drill arrived on standard coulters with 12.5cm row spacing. Mr. Pineo also opted for the low-disturbance, narrow tine option, which he says will be much easier to pull on his heavy clay land using the farm’s Deutz-Fahr 6.185 tractor.
“Seed placement and establishment are really good, but with the narrow tines, it should become even easier to direct drill straight behind the forager as soon as the maize comes off,” he says. “This means lower-cost establishment, and with less fuel too, which will add to my efficiency.”
Better efficiency has also been put into operation at Laurel Farm with the switch from two 3m Kverneland NG-S power harrows to one 5m folding Kverneland NG-H F30 power harrow.
“Historically, we had been using two 3m models for ease of transport around our narrow lanes, but as tractors have increased in power, we began running the Kverneland power harrows using economy PTO settings,” he says.
Having finally made the decision to go wider, he says efficiency has been given a boost.
“Swapping to one 5m Kverneland folding power harrow model now means the same work can be done by one tractor and one operator,” he says. “With GPS, there’s very little overlap, which again, all adds to my overall efficiency.”
