Mechanical weed control

Customers can now take full advantage of the Garford farm products, recognised as world-leading, with their range of precision guided hoes, in-row weeders and row crop equipment, including new machinery and spares.

Band and Hooded Sprayers

An alternative to inter-row cultivators, the hooded sprayer can provide total weed kill between the rows without soil disturbance.

Band widths between 10cm and 60cm can be accommodated with 2 choices of hood size and a special swivel action. The hooded sprayer units can be employed on their own or in combination with soil engaging crop protection shields if required. The hoods are supported on parallel linkage wheel units. Hooded sprayer’s can be equipped with full spraying systems, with a tank up to 600ltr, or with front mounted tanks if higher capacities are required.

Garford also offer the option to work hooded spraying and band spraying as one unit having twin line systems being fed from two tanks one on the front of the tractor the other on the back. This allows for ultimate spraying efficiency due to the ability to provide total weed control between the rows and foliar coverage over the row. Therefore reducing chemical usage, cost and environmental risks are reduced.

Robo-Pilot

The accuracy of Robocrop guidance for your tractor. Robo-pilot facilitates integrating the Robocrop Precision Guidance System for tractor guidance. Unlike common automatic guidance systems, we use local positioning information to guide the tractor.

The Robocrop camera views the crop ahead of the tractor and using a unique vision analysis program determines the exact centre of the crop row foliage to within millimetres. This enables for very high accuracy of crop row tracking and hence the tractor guidance.

Robocrop InRow Weeders

The Garford Robocrop InRow Weeder uses tried and tested Robocrop video image analysis techniques to locate individual plants in order to mechanically remove weeds from the inter row and importantly within the crop row between the plants.

Developed for use on transplanted crops such as lettuce, cabbage, celery etc Robocrop InRow can however be used on most crops that are planted with regular plant and row spacing where the plant foliage is clearly separated from the next plant. With accuracy achieved of 8 mm distance away from plant stem, not a huge advantage to get any closer as the crop will be out competing the weed pressure closer than 8mm. This then allows for a total weed control through the field.

Robocrop Guided Hoes

Robocrop is the original and best crop imaging system which achieves excellent row following by viewing multiple crop rows over a large area. Utilising the Robocrop grid matching technique accurate row following is possible even on narrow row cereals and multi-line (carrot type) rows.

Images are analysed at a rate of 30 frames per second and the direction of the hoe adjusted via a hydraulic side shift with anti-backlash action. Accuracy is generally 15mm at the camera or with the addition of soil engaging discs better than 10mm accuracy is possible.

Forward speeds of up to 12kph are common and higher speeds have been successfully employed. Garford hoes have been specially adapted to cope with these extreme speeds. Special pressure rams keep the soil engaging components in work and improve penetration in hard conditions. Garford Slash blades ensure no “slip by” of weeds adjacent to the row and also provide good foliage clearance to prevent stripping.

Robocrop Spot Sprayer

Graford’s have developed the In Row Weeder to be implemented to create the spot sprayer, a modified programme to seek out individual weeds growing in the crops. With the aid of specially developed nozzles, it sprays as a true spot sprayer, therefore reducing the chemical cost. Initially the machine is aimed at treating potatoes growing in carrots, parsnips, onions or leeks but the interest and usage requirements are spreading to general weed control in all varieties of crops.

Robocrop Side Shift System

The heart of enabling weeding of crops is the Garford Side Shift. Fitted with two rams, potentiometer and speed related flow control valve, these units can be supplied for retro fitting to any make of hoe or mounted machine that needs accurate guidance. The side shift system comes in varieties of sizes SD30, HD50 and XHD50 to accommodate various widths of machines. XHD50 side shift can work for precision bed forming, planting as a through PTO can be worked in conjunction with the side shift for high accuracy operations.

Weedfoil Weedwiper

The Garford Weedfoil / Weedwiper is a height dependant chemical applicator which uses a saturated felt pad to transfer systemic herbicide onto the weeds which are growing above the crop.

A microcontroller based system maintains pad saturation via pad sensors and individual pump systems. The Weedfoil pad has a special shape like an inverted aerofoil, which has been specially designed to provide a large contact area for the weed to wipe over and therefore transfers a large amount of liquid onto the weed. Pad height is controlled via 2 adjustable height gauge wheels.

A special Precision Weedfoil model is available for use in young vegetable crops and features individual remote adjustment of pad height controlled by twin gauge wheels per bed, with CCTV monitoring and with hooded sprayer units between each bed.