Snapshot

Owners: Grant Robinson and family
Location: Temora, New South Wales
Average annual rainfall: 520 millimetres
Soil types: heavy sodic clays
Soil pH: 4.5 to 7
Enterprises: cropping and sheep
Crops grown: wheat, canola, faba beans, barley

Grant Robinson and his family bought a disc seeder in 2009 to retain stubble and improve seed placement accuracy on their farm near Temora, New South Wales, but moved back to tyne seeding in 2012.

The main reason for the switch to tynes was because the disc seeding system, set on 304.8-millimetre (12-inch) row spacings, would not close the seeding slot in their “troublesome” sodic and hard-setting clay soils.

Grant says their machine was an earlier model and he believes the manufacturer has since refined the seeder to overcome this problem.

“In a perfect world, I’d have a disc seeder to use when the soil is dry,” he says. “After rainfall, we’d have to wait a bit longer until the topsoil crusted slightly before we could start sowing again.”

The advantages of the disc seeder, he says, include having the capacity to sow more hectares in a 24-hour period than is possible with a tyned rig, good depth control and ease of sowing into stubble.

However, he says the family wanted to use soil-incorporated herbicides, such as trifluralin, so ultimately decided to switch back to tynes in 2012.

The disc seeder was sold in favour of a conventional spring tyne and press wheel seeder set on 254mm (10-inch) row spacings, but in 2015 the family transitioned to a parallelogram tyne and press wheel machine set on 254mm row spacing to improve seed placement accuracy.

“We’re not anti-disc seeding and, if we ever needed a second machine, we’d certainly consider buying one for seeding in dry conditions,” he says.

He says the family’s tyned parallelogram seeder probably costs as much to maintain as their disc seeder did.

“However, with our tyned machine, we are seeing better seed germination, we can start sowing our country earlier after rainfall and our weed management is better with the use of a wider range of soil-incorporated herbicides,” he says.

With sheep grazing one-third of the Robinson family’s farm, Grant suspects the soil is slightly compacted, which he believes a tyned rig handles better than a disc seeding system.

More information: Grant Robinson, verbeena@hotmail.com.au