French machinery specialist Agrisem has come up with a monster disc-based mulching cultivator in the shape of the Disc-O-Mulch Gold, sold in the UK under the KRM banner. We used one for a season; here’s what we think.
Designed for fast, shallow cultivation that mixes and levels any crop residue while encouraging weed seed germination, the Disc-O-Mulch comes in mounted and trailed forms with working widths from 3.0m to 12m. Versions up to 3.5m wide are rigid, 4.0m machines can be rigid or folding, and then all the wider variants are fold-only. We went for a 4.5m trailed model, whose two rows of scalloped discs can be backed by one of eight rear rollers; the test machine came with a 600mm diameter Flexi-Roll.
Whatever the French engineers might have economised on when laying out the DiscO-Mulch, it wasn’t steel. The test machine weighed in at an impressive 7.75t, which if nothing else should mean that hard-land
penetration won’t be a problem. The design is based around a central spine frame that carries two vertical-folding wings, with a couple of transport wheels at the back and a long, rear-pivoted drawbar.
Tractor attachment is either via a ring hitch, a 70mm ball hitch or a linkage drawbar; we opted for the latter as our preferred choice (the ball hitch) brought the cultivator’s drawbar-mounted air brake couplers and hose carrier too close to the pto shaft of a Claas Axion 820. While that won’t hold true for all tractors, Agrisem said it will re-jig the brackets to give more clearance.
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