In Pojbuky, they sow using an Omega with a spacing of 12.5cm

The agricultural cooperative of Pojbuky (district of Tábor) farms in the north-eastern corner of the South-Bohemian region on ca. 2300 ha of agricultural land. Out of crop production, they grow oilseed rape, winter wheat, spring barley, potatoes and fodder crops for the fodder base used for large livestock farming. Towards the end of last year, they started looking into purchasing a new sowing-machine and after successful testing, they decided to purchase the BEDNAR OMEGA OO 6000 sowing machine.

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When choosing the sowing machine, inter-row spacing was no doubt an important factor in Pojbuky.  During spring, they sow 400 ha of barley for malting purposes and from their own experience they realised that smaller inter-row spacing is very important for spring barley. This fact is also confirmed by a number of other leading spring barley growers in the Czech Republic, as well as abroad. The first reason why they use 12.5 cm when sowing is the fact they are not faced with undesirable flattening of the growth. The second, and main, reason for using a narrower spacing when sowing is the fact that it provides plants with more space for producing tillers. Unofficial attempts even indicate that when the inter-row spacing is narrowed within the range of 10 -15 cm, each 1 cm less can increase the yield by up to 0.7 %.  OMEGA sowing machines are therefore designed to meet the requirements for  narrower inter-row distances.

As previously mentioned, ZD Pojbuky also grows potatoes, namely first early potatoes, second early potatoes, as well as industrial varieties. Although they often rid their land of stones for potato growing purposes, stones are abundant there. Therefore the OMEGA OO sowing machine, thanks to its robust design, is suitable for local conditions. 

During our first visit, the machine was working on land with an area of 20 ha near the village of Vodice. In autumn, the land was ploughed and in spring it was prepared using a pre-sowing compactor. The conditions were ideal for sowing – the soil crumbled well, the soil moisture was good, and the soil structure was as required. The spring barley growth, Sunshine variety, was set up with a sowing rate of 190 kg/ha on 19.3.2015. 

During the second visit on 23.4., the growth was already at the beginning of the tiller production stage with the main straw and with first visible tiller. The growth was balanced thanks to precise placement of caryopses to the same depth (3 cm) throughout the field. Even distribution of the vertical placement of seeds is important for even germination of growths which then influences growth conduction. Quality placement was achieved through precise copying and placement of sowing coulters on parallelogram – BEDNAR PSP System.