In mid-May, I visited Mr. Slavík, a private farmer in Drahorazy in the Jičín District. His son Vojtěch spent some of the Monday afternoon with me and took me on a tour of the oil seed rape fields. Their farm grows oil seed rape on approx. 200 hectares of the total area of 900 hectares of arable land. Other crop they grow includes wheat, sugar beet, poppy, caraway and clover.
Most soil blocks are located at the altitude of 250 – 350 meters. Lately, the Slavík family have been dealing with below-average precipitation amount and they are expecting drought again this year. Mr. Slavík is in the care of our sales representative, Jaroslav Pavlíček from ZE TE PA where they are very good at their job. The farm uses Kompaktomat and Verso, and the new Falcon PRO seed drill, and they have tested and seen demonstrations of other machines there (Turbulent, Softer, Diskomat, and the new machine Fantom PRO during my visit).
Last year, during the Falcon SW STRIP 6 Tour, we sowed oil seed rape there and our client had the opportunity to test the front pre-processing STRIP-TILL section and the rear seeding section with 25cm spacing in their conditions and to compare this technology with conventional seeding. Mr. Slavík had already ordered the Falcon PRO seed drill with the “standard equipment”, including a front double-disc pre-processing section with an integrated flexi-board and a rear six-meter-long seeding bar for 12.5cm spacing. Mr. Slavík Jr praised the large output of the seed drill, which is related to the high travelling speed and also the quality of seed placement at the precisely set seeding depth. In addition, he also praised the hydraulic down-pressure of the drill coulters and the installation of the press-wheel that has a great effect on even germination of the small seeds of poppy and caraway.
Vojtěch Slavík also pointed out the great benefit of purchasing the Verso seedbed cultivator. He uses a disc cultivator for the first stubble cultivation; then a disc cultivator again for the second pass according to the soil humidity or a share cultivator for deeper cultivation. It is important to use Verso to process everything just before seeding, which works perfectly both in minimizing and conventional technologies. The farm started to save when they used this technology, for example in reduced seed batches, and all crops sown by Falcon PRO showed quality germination and evenness. Wheat sown on 19/9/2017 already had two offshoots in the autumn.
Mr. Slavík is very proud of his oil seed rape fields. When we got to the field, we found large and healthy plants with massive and high-quality roots. The crop was well branched and had long pods. Mr. Slavík was very satisfied with the oil seed rape sown by Falcon SW STRIP and he expects a large yield, in spite of being in very heavy, clayey soil on a slope. Only line cultivar was used, 55 to 60 plants per square meter, which corresponds with the seeding batch of 3.5kg. The strip-till technology definitely played its role there. We are glad that Farmet machines helped such high-quality condition of the oil seed rape.
Ing. Václav Mytyska
Product and Technological Advisor, Farmet a. s.
