Shayne Ints is the Manager, Irrigated Farming, for Reardon Farms on their ‘Worrall Creek’property, near Talwood, Queensland. The farm has 2000 hectares of wheat crop on red clay, chocolate and grey soils, “It is basically, all types of soil,” explained Shayne. In June and July 2016, they planted 1000 hectares using RYAN NT press wheels ona Morris Contourdrill with 60 rows on 12” spacings. The planting included including 500 hectares under lateral irrigation. “We don’t have to pull up – and there is less maintenance,” said Shayne. “They are self-cleaning and increasing speed cleans them up.” “In drizzly rain you could see the mud flick off at 11 kph,” commented John Cassidy, who operated the machine. They cut through when the rubber wheels would build up and lift up off the ground. “We had five different machines in a 300 hectare paddock and this was the only one with coil wheels. The coils are much better.”

Jeff Jones has 35 years cropping experience at ‘Micron Downs’ near Goondiwindi and uses RYAN NT double discs and coil press wheels fitted to his 2006 model Janke parallelogram planter. The press wheels are self-cleaning and give great seed to soil contact”, said Jeff. “They really stood out on the last seeding; the coils don’t pluck the seed out of the ground when it’s wet, compared with rubber-tyred press wheels.” Jeff used 15” plain double discs disc after trial work to get a smaller incision to avoid smearing and moisture loss. As he said: “There was less fracturing and drying out of the soil. It gives even soil contact, with no air pockets. And we have no maintenance issues.” They plant wheat in mid-late May and he plans to rotate with chick peas. “This is a simple concept, which allows us to get going a bit earlier and we can plant in wetter conditions.”