A Grassland Renovator with a Unique Tillage Device

ABSTRACT A cooperative program of development, design, and research involving farmers, county extension per-sonnel, John Deere Des Moines Works, and the Agricultural Engineering and Agronomy Departments of the University of Kentucky has resulted in a unique machine specifically designed to interseed forage crops into existing grass fields. The machine, which is now in production, is a three point hitch machine consisting of an integral frame on which are mounted powered tillage blades, drive train, seed tubes, press wheels, spray noz-zles, and seed boxes. The machine is 2.44 m wide and has 12 tillage blades which cut through the grass sod and provide tilled furrows 1.9 cm wide and 1.9 to 5.7 cm deep for placement of legume and other forage seed. Each tillage blade is 30.5 cm in diameter, has hard-faced cut-ting teeth, and is powered to rotate in the direction of travel at an angular velocity of 730 rpm. In comprehen-sive field tests, over 1200 ha were seeded in 30 different counties in Kentucky to fully evaluate the machine-design principles and functional and mechanical reliabil-ities. These field tests demonstrated that the design principles were sound and that they could be incorporat-ed into a production machine to provide a reliable method of grassland renovation.