Trailed GD Drill

The GD does what every direct drill should do – it closes the slot in a variety of situations. By covering the seed, it increases germination rates and protects from slugs and chemical damage. The openers also follow the ground contours well. It can cope with high residue situations and tall cover crops. The only problem we encountered was drilling into thick mats of cereal straw on the ground. We modified our practice and cut our stubble much higher, which dramatically improved the problem.

Over the last 4 years of running our GD, we are impressed with the build quality and reliability. This drill has allowed us to transition from conventional tillage to regenerative agriculture, incorporating cover crops, broadening our rotation and practicing no-till successfully. We use our drill twice per year on most fields, to establish cash crops and cover crops. The multi-hopper configuration (including the small seed hopper) makes it versatile. I also think the ability to place fertiliser next to the seed in our first years transitioning to no-till was important.

I have been running a trailed Weaving GD on our 550-acre medium to heavy beef and arable farm for nearly 3 years moving on from a strip-till drill. My focus is to be predominantly zero till, but with the flexibility to carry out low disturbance subsoiling, mole draining or light discing where necessary and still follow with the GD.  

The main reason I chose the GD was that it ticked all of the boxes in terms of a 3-metre trailed machine with all the capabilities of a larger model such as dual hoppers, total integration of Avadex/slug pellets etc and arrived ready to go without any further modification. I also liked the angled slot closure as it has meant the seed is always covered under a shelf even in drying ground conditions. It also felt reassuring to buy a product from a family-owned British company with hundreds of units successfully on the ground already.

We are currently 50% zero-till, with the other 50% aimed towards zero-till next year after a reset, with focus on maintaining soil health to reduce or eliminate mechanical intervention where we can in the future.

 The main benefits from using the GD and direct drilling include; reduced blackgrass (through low disturbance but also better results from pre-ems), more consistent spring cropping (through better moisture retention), more forgiving ground conditions meaning we can travel when we could not before and fuel and time savings (from running just 1 machine through the ground). In the event of crop failure, there are still roots and residue from the previous crop untouched in the ground rather than leaving bare soil.  With the GD we have the ability to plant a high biomass winter cover crop and drill spring crops straight into it successfully.

Wisdoms we have gathered so far and would share with other perspective operators would be; start with crops and varieties that have good vigour and are known to suit zero-till, variable seed rate drilling is especially helpful, don’t be afraid of using slug pellets pre or post where necessary, ensure compaction, drainage issues etc are sorted before fully committing to zero-till and finally, the way the land is treated throughout the year will affect how successful the next crop is. 

We purchased a 4.8m trailed Weaving GD drill in Spring 2016. The farm had been transitioning to no tillage over the previous 5 years as we had taken the decision to reduce the amount of steel we were wearing up and fuel we were burning in order to turn our Hanslope clay soils into a seedbed.

When it came to the drill purchase we had decided to go for a disc drill for 2 reasons; firstly our goal was to reduce grass weed germination at the point of drilling, so we wanted to be as low disturbance as possible, and secondly, our soils remain quite wet in the spring, and we considered a tine drill would pull up “puggy” wet clay in the spring, and potentially have an issue with trash from cover crops in spring. Having now run the drill over a variety of conditions in both spring and autumn we are sure we made the right decision.

The trailed GD has plenty of downforce to cut seed into the soil in very dry conditions, but most importantly for us, can close the slot in very wet conditions - Autumns of 2019 and 2020 really tested that! We have seen huge transformation to the condition of our soils over the past 5 years. It took a couple of years before we started to notice changes other than the immediate increase in worm numbers, but as an example, for the first 3 years we found 2nd cereals challenging with chopped straw locking up nutrition. The biology seems to now cycle chopped wheat straw much quicker and 2nd wheats are now no problem to direct drill and have been yielding better than ever. Barley is a little less forgiving after chopped spring barley, but this year for the first time we have direct drilled all the winter barley into chopped straw and it looks great. Importantly the GD will also work in a cultivated system which means we can still remain flexible with contract customers, and don't need another drill in the back of the shed.