22nd August

At the beginning of this year I bought an air drill carrot machine.

I have been looking for one for a few years, as carrot seed is very fine, and can only be sown with an air seeder.

The machine works, with a fan which is driven by the tractor PTO, this fan spins and creates air, there are pipes go from her to the seed boxes, in these boxes there are circular plates with different size holes for different sized seeds.

As you drive along the field these plates spin round, once it is set up correctly air should suck a single seed in each hole, then the seed gets dropped at the bottom where there is no air.

But these machines are thirty-five thousand new and have been really expensive even second hand.

But earlier this year I did see one and it was cheap, but it needed work done to get it field ready.

Considering I had never seen one, or worked on one, it was a wee bit of a gamble.

But after stripping it down, re welding, sorting out the bent fan, re sealing it air tight, new belts and getting it set to our row widths it looked ready to go.

And after a wee bit of u tube in the field, to actually figure out how to work it, seeds were getting sown.

And we have carrots, hopefully by the end of this month we should be harvesting them, it would have been earlier, but like all of the field crops they have been sitting still as it has been so dry.

But with the recent rain thigs are coming on.

The machine came with coriander seed plates and legs, these are set up for sowing double rows and carrots are sown in triple rows.

But as carrot and coriander seeds are very similar, I decided not to spend anything on new carrot feet and plates until I seen it actually worked.

Next year I will order carrot plates and feet, because the carrots are looking braw.

Let’s just hope the carrot fly doesn’t think they look as good as I do.

But we sowed slightly late because seemingly the carrot fly is done by the end of April.

Although I don’t know how any one knows this, they are invisibly like the turnip fly that eats the turnip seed.