Cheshire contractors Ross and Tom Yarwood. Originally purchased for direct seeding grass and clover into an existing ley, the Yarwoods’ 3m Moore Unidrill is earmarked for establishing a significant area of GS4 herbal leys.
It should be well suited to this task, with the heavy discs capable of slicing into tough turf so that good seed-to-soil contact is achieved.
Their machine is the Grassland 32-row model, which means they can achieve decent cover in a single pass, unlike Arable 24-row models that can require two runs over the field.
“I’m not a fan of the two-pass technique as the turf can start to pick up the second time over and make a mess,” says Ross.
“Seed distribution isn’t as good either, it takes longer and it uses more fuel,” he adds.
The only downside of the closer spacing is that there’s a greater risk of it blocking with debris, although this is less of a problem when the discs are relatively new.
The Yarwoods’ machine was purchased second-hand in tidy condition, but it had seen some work.
This meant most of the wearing parts needed to be replaced, including a set of discs, bearings, coulters and rings for the Guttler rear packer.
Most of the time, the rig is fitted with twenty 30kg weights to help push the discs into the ground and put enough pressure on the Guttler packer to close the slots.
This is usually ample, but for hard-baked ground they’ve invested in a second set of weights that doubles the ballast to a total of 1.2t.
Credits to James Andrews, FWI and Ross and Tom Yarwood.
