Tired of Limavady’s persistent rainfall hampering the use of his trailed disc drill, Alistair Craig hatched a plan to build a less weather-dependent alternative.

Key criteria were that it should be 4m wide and three-point linkage mounted.

He also wanted deep working legs for alleviating slumping of his sandy loam soils, and be able to sow multiple seeds simultaneously at different depths.

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Plus, as a fan of Vaderstad single-disc coulters – and having successfully grafted a set from an old Rapid onto his Kverneland MSE4000 drill – he was keen to include these too.

Clearly, no implement was available off the shelf – and with 300 cows to milk, 100ha of arable ground and 140ha of grass to manage, Alistair could ill afford the time to start building from scratch.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to look far to find a suitable platform to work from.

Based near Downpatrick, County Down, Erth Engineering builds a raft of cultivation and tillage tools, two of which Alistair had earmarked for the project.

One was the Agriseeder direct drill, which – with two rows of single-disc coulters mounted on a simple frame – would be ideal for placing most of his cash crop seeds.

The other was its Panbuster low-disturbance toolbar – a 4m/six-leg example of which he had bought three years previously to use both with the Kverneland drill, and as a standalone implement.

His intention was for this to sit in front of the Agriseeder to lift the ground and, with seed tubes welded to the rear, be used to establish beans, mainly as a companion crop.

Cutting weight

Together, they would be a hefty pairing so, to better distribute the weight, the plan was to have a toolbar version of the drill teamed with a front-mounted hopper.

Even then, it would still be a challenge for his Valtra T195 to lift. “I’d been chatting with David at Erth and I was considering getting him to make a lighter version,” says Alistair.

“But as luck would have it, a dealer had told him about an old-style 4m machine parked at the back of its yard which didn’t have such a heavy construction.”

Better still, it had been pilfered for parts, so he only needed to pay for the essentials – the frame, 32 coulters, a packer roller and distribution head – which came in at £10,000.

As the Panbuster already had a rear linkage, it was a straightforward task to hook the Agriseeder toolbar on the back.

However, fitting four distribution heads and their associated pipework was a little more time consuming, so much so that this task still needs to be completed.

Tri-depth sowing

Once finished, the drill will offer seeding at three different depths.

Tubes on the back of the subsoiler legs are the deepest, allowing large seeds, such as beans, to be placed at about 15cm.

To stop seeds dropping any further down the slot cut by the leg, Alistair employed a handy tip from soil expert Philip Wright.

This involved welding an M16 bolt on the rear of the leg, sleeved with a length of blue water pipe.

As seeds drop out of the tube, they hit this protrusion and settle at a consistent depth.

The way the seed is delivered to the legs is also fuss-free, with a basic, six-way distribution head custom-made by Erth Engineering.

“It’s just a capped tube with angled outlets welded around the outside, but it works well and the spread of seed is nice and even,” he says.

Disc coulters are next in line, designed to work in the top 5cm of soil.

Currently all 32 are fed by one large distribution head, but this will soon be replaced by two with 16-outlets each – one piped to the front row of discs and one to the rear.

In addition to easing the process of establishing crops – such as maize at wider row spacings – this will open up another spot for applying a companion crop or fertiliser.

Plus, regular sowing can still be carried out by sending the same seeds to both.

Finally, a 10-way distribution head will feed a set of spreader plates at the rear to scatter fine seeds or slug pellets on the surface, which are then scratched in with a following harrow.

Bargain front hopper

Rather than splash out on a high-end front tank, Alistair spent just £1,800 on a second-hand Kverneland DF2 which had been painted in Lemken livery by the previous owner.

Though pleasingly manual, this has the benefit of twin hoppers and metering units, allowing half of his seeding zones to be supplied simultaneously.

This can either be sent to the legs and one set of discs; both rows of discs; or one of the former plus the rear splash plates.

Complex mixes

Having such a plethora of placement options will allow Alistair to experiment further with companion crops.

Examples planted so far include maize sown in 25cm rows using every other disc coulter, along with sunflowers to pick up trace elements and beans to fix nitrogen.

Oilseed rape has been planted using the same companions plus buckwheat to mine phosphorus, and he’s been establishing wheat in a six-way mix and barley with 10 partner crops.

Direct and min-till drilling

The drill will happily work directly into a stubble, but in most situations, Alistair will buzz over the ground with a set of Vaderstad Crosscutter discs to generate a little extra tilth.

Thanks to the Panbuster’s leading discs and narrow legs, clods aren’t pulled from beneath, so the discs have some nice soil to work in.

When setting working depth, he starts with the subsoiler, which was pushed down to 15cm for most of last season.

The drill toolbar is then levelled by juggling the position of the rams on the Panbuster’s linkage and the height of the packer roller.

“I set the linkage by eye at the moment, but ideally I’d have some shims to clip round the ram to make the process a bit simpler,” he says.

Seeding depth is then adjusted using rams on each gang of discs.

Planned modifications

Despite efforts to reduce the weight of the outfit, it still comes in at a hefty 4.5t, which is only exacerbated by its length.

By running the tractor on colossal VF 900 rear and 710 front tyres, it travels surprisingly well in wet conditions, but Alistair has a couple of plans to reduce the burden.

One is to replace the solid rear packer roller with a cage roller, which will have the added benefit of leaving a more open seed-bed.

The other is to bring the subsoiler’s three-point linkage mounting points nearer the tractor.

“Making it closer coupled and having less weight right at the back should hopefully put a lot less load on the rear axle,” he says.

Work is also under way to assemble a system for applying home-brewed beneficial anaerobic microbes (BAM), the theory being that they will improve soil and crop health.

Alistair has already mounted a Selmech silage additive applicator on the front hopper, so just pipework and some spray nozzles are required to complete the setup.

“I’m not yet sure if this will be worthwhile, but I’ve got the option there so that I can experiment,” he says.

BAM is already being put to good use on the farm, being added to straw bales as they are spread into cattle sheds.

“It’s powerful stuff and has made a massive difference to the speed at which manure breaks down,” he adds.