Bring together a power harrow and a trailed drill and what do you get? A new breed of universal drill. Lemken’s Compact Solitair 9/300 Z10 is one of a very select group. We find out what a pre-production example can do…
Plenty of farmers have ditched their old power harrow/drill combination for a trailed machine that makes a seedbed with discs and/or tines. Where conditions and horsepower allow, these universal drills, which are able to work into ploughed land or stubble, have clear advantages — faster work through higher travel speeds, fewer refills thanks to a much bigger hopper.
But passive cultivation isn’t always enough. Sometimes conditions require a pre-pass with a power harrow, and that prompted Lemken’s notion of a hybrid machine. The Compact Solitair is offered in 3m, 4m and 6m versions. It’s made by swapping out the disc section of a Compact Solitair 9/300 air drill for a Zirkon 10 power harrow, and brings an immediate advantage. The user can change tine speed and (unusually) tine rotation direction, along with the working depth, forward speed and clod board position; this gives a better shot at matching the seedbed to the drill. Where travel speed can be maintained, a mix-and-match approach looks like a sensible route to a truly uni- versal drill.
Let’s take a closer look. In the 3m version the power harrow sports 12 rotors, whose 340mm quick-change tines can be set to ‘grip’ or ‘drag’ by changing rotation direction, a job that takes about 10 minutes. Drag mode suits stony land and leaves a more level finish, while grip mode gives better penetration/mixing and is better for working down stubbles. The standard gearbox gives 330rpm or 440rpm rotor speeds from 1,000rpm input. This proved fine on fairly heavy land, with speeds down to 178rpm also available at shaft inputs of 540rpm or 750rpm.
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