At last after 5-6 days of dry weather a chance to demo the Sward Lifter Grassland Subsoiler in SW Scotland. With huge amounts of compaction in grassland the OPICO demostration list keeps growing & with few fields dry enough to operate opportunites to demo are few & far between in this part of the world.
The land is probably a bit wet for the Sward Lifters full benifit & care should be taken not to smear if operating in wet conditions. Needs must & todays weathers provided an opportunity before tomorrows standard forcast of rain.
A soil pit was dug before setting up the machine, its always best to judge the compaction problem & depth before trying to remedy a issue that might not exist! The sample was very cloddy, water lodged, with horizontal fissure & root depth was at best 3 inchl; compaction was found at 8 inch so definatley a Sward Lifter problem & not a shallower Sward Slitter issue. I set the Sward Lifters operating depth at 9 inch, finely adjusting the opening discs to suit & set the machine level in work. Operating speed was in the region of 8km/hr, with a broken 4wd care had to be taken not to damage the sward.
As with most farmers Robert wants to see some results before investing his hard earned cash so two demo strips were completed the 1st in his silage field & 2nd a grazing field. We didn't complete the whole field just 5 runs in each to give a nice comparison with the untreated field area. From here on in mother natures going to have to do some work & I'll keep you posted with pictures on our progress.
If you've got compaction issues & think we can help please get in touch for a chat, demo or purchase.
Regards
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