At its manufacturing facility in Sweden, Vaderstad introduced its new Carrier 925 high-speed disc to members of the media in late May. It’s designed specifically for very shallow tillage applications.
Unlike Vaderstad’s other Carrier models on the North American market, the Carrier 925 gets 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 very 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 cutout on that one inch,” Phillip Korczak, Vaderstad’s director of sales for Western Canada, says. “But you would have spaces across the disc that didn’t see any tillage.
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“Now we’re adding a third row, so we’re able to really tighten up the spacings between ranks.”
Adding the third row eliminates the possibility of 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.”
Aside from the three rows of discs, the CrossCutter disc blade is the second key to the 925’s ability to perform well at shallow working depths. It has an exaggerated wave shape that is significantly different from blades on most other high-speed discs in the market, allowing it to move more dirt at shallow depths.
“it’s meant for ultra shallow tillage,” he says. “When we say ultra shallow, we mean one to five cm. Typically you’re in that three- to 3-1/2-cm zone.
“It’s basically a super wavy disc. Some of the wavy discs out there have maybe a two- or 2-½-inch wave. Ours actually has an 11-cm (4.3-inch) wave on it. So it’s very aggressive. That allows for a full cutout 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 cutout 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 gets a roughly nine-metre (30-foot) working width, but Vaderstad says other widths will be introduced in the future.
Even with the shallow working depth, the 925 will still require at least a 450-hp tractor in front of it, due to the high speed requirement.
With the increasing problem of weed resistance, having an effective mechanical means to remove them from no-till fields with minimal disturbance will likely continue to grow in importance.
Says Kroczak, “As our founder said, there’s no weed that is resistant to steel.”
