REPORT: Seeding specialist Dale Drills has continued to develop and modernise its range of direct drills, offering options and modifications to suit evolving drilling requirements. Some of the latest updates to the high capacity Eco-L Drill have been put through their paces on a Wiltshire farm over the last 12 months.
Moving less soil has become a tick box on many drill shopping lists; for Sebastian Blanch of JB Farms in Crudwell there were a number of other considerations. “We’d used a Väderstad Rapid for 20 years and we purchased a 6.0m Seed Hawk to take us towards direct drilling.”
Aims, he explains, are to tackle blackgrass and boost soil health; there are a range of soil types across the farm to contend with. Other objectives include opening up the heavy soils and improving soil structure, establishing cover crops to assist with this. He decided go with a tine drill as a route to no-till; feeling that a disc drill would be a ‘step too far’ and perhaps not best suited to the proportion of land which is Cotswold brash. “We’d also embarked on inter-row hoeing with the aim of reducing our reliance on herbicides, so we needed the drill to work with the hoe.”
The hoe in question is an 8.0m Carré Econet SGI, chosen for its capacity as Seb explains. “With a single folding frame hoe, the price difference between a 6.0m and 8.0m model is negligible, and as it’s such a tight window for hoeing, the additional output is very useful. We always go for capacity so we can seem over-mechanised for our acreage, but as I’m farming alongside a full-time job in the seeds sector, it works for us.”
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