WESTERN PRODUCER — Vaderstad introduced its Carrier 925 high-speed disc to members of the media in late May at its manufacturing facility in Sweden. The unit is designed specifically for very shallow tillage applications.
Unlike Vaderstad’s other Carrier models on the North American market, the Carrier 925 has a third row of discs instead of two. The extra row reduces the effective lateral space between discs from 12.5 centimetres on the two-row models down to 8.3 cm on the three-row 925. That ensures complete coverage even at shallow working depths.
“If you think of a regular disc, if you wanted to do only the top inch of the soil profile, with the disc spacing you would get a v-notch cut out on that one inch,” says Phillip Korczak, Vaderstad’s director of sales for Western Canada.
“But you would have spaces across the disc that didn’t see any tillage. Now we’re adding a third row, so we’re able to really tighten up the spacings between ranks.”
Adding the third row eliminates uneven soil coverage across the implement, moving all the soil even at shallow depths and incorporating crop residue.
“It’s meant to go behind the combine,” Korczak adds. “This is going to mulch that top zone in the field to make sure that the weed and previous crop seeds have the best chance to germinate. Then, whether it’s chemical or a second mechanical application, to eliminate those weeds to create that stale seedbed for the following crop year.”
The CrossCutter disc blade is the second key in working well at shallow depths. It has an exaggerated wave shape that is different from blades on most other high-speed discs in the market.
“It’s meant for ultra-shallow tillage,” he says. “When we say ultra-shallow, we mean one to five centimetres. Typically you’re in that three to three and a half centimetre zone.
“It’s basically a super wavy disc. Some of the wavy discs out there have maybe a two or two and a half inch wave. Ours actually has an 11 centimetre (4.3 inch) wave on it, so it’s very aggressive. That allows for a full cut-out of that profile across the width of the tool, while still maintaining a shallow depth.”
Korczak says the 925 is a good choice for use in no-till fields where growers want to minimize the depth of soil disturbance.
“So across the width of that toolbar, you’re getting full incorporation and cut out of that top shallow profile, mixing of weed seeds, sizing and mixing of residue. And at the same time, you’re not disturbing anything underneath that.
“With all the work farmers out there have done to be no-till and get that nice organic zone and no-till profile, you’re really not messing that up.”
The 925 has a roughly nine metre (30-foot) working width, but Vaderstad says other widths will be introduced. It will require at least a 450 horsepower tractor due to the high-speed requirement.
With the increasing problem of weed resistance, an effective mechanical means to remove them from no-till fields with minimal disturbance will likely grow in importance.
Says Korczak, “as our founder said, there’s no weed that is resistant to steel.”
