Berm Tillers and Mowers
Berm Tillers and Mowers
Today’s wine grape growers are under increasing pressure to keep their berms clean. Wineries are beginning to restrict certain weed spray chemicals, and the cost of those chemicals is certainly not going down anytime soon. At Acampo Machine Works, we are grape growers too. We realize that you just cannot stop your weed spray program cold-turkey. Certain vineyards will have problem weeds that need to be controlled with weed spray. Others may have exceptionally hard ground, some are simply sandy, and some will have that patch of mares tail that will grow higher than the canopy. What we need as growers is a tool that can be changed to fit the various vineyard conditions we have. Our go-to implement is the Gearmore-Spedo multifunction under the vine tool carrier. It is more simply known as a “Spedo”.
It is our opinion that the Spedo unit is the strongest under the vine implements ever built. The double- sided units have their own PTO driven hydraulic system with 4 separate pumps for maximum HP. There is a variety of extreme duty tools to use with the unit:
1. Rototillers: These are for grinding the berm. As you will see in the videos, these will take on the hardest of berms and till up the soil down to around 2 ½”. A grower will typically use these in the beginning of spring to break up the compacted berm and weeds that have grown from the winter before.
2. Blades: Once you have broken up the berm with the rototiller heads and after a month or two (depending on mother nature) here come those weeds again. The blades can now be used because the rototiller has made the first pass and you just need to flip the soil to “keep it clean”.
3. Flail mower heads: Now, let’s say you have a certain block where you want to just mow the berms. These flail heads are monsters when it comes to that. Unlike normal rotary mowers,
these grind up material and can be used in cheese weed, pig weed, other woody weed problems, grasses, and even leftover canes. They are built tough and flail grind anything on top of the berm.
We have heard from growers using the tools in several ways. There are growers just mowing with the flail heads. If the berm ever really gets out of control, they will swap over to the rototillers for one season and then back the flail mowers for the next. We have growers who will historically band gypsum or other amendments onto the berm for better water penetration. They go in afterwards with the rototiller head and were able to mix those amendments into the berm soil. We have growers on weed spray programs where the weeds got so high it was out of the spray pattern reach. No problem: just send in the flail heads to knock it down.
Please take the time and watch the two videos we have prepared. We sent our technicians out to film Spedos running in the worst conditions. We wanted to show a variety. For example: 3’ tall weeds, super hard red clay ground, cobble rock ground, that kind of thing. We all know these Spedo units work great in the sandy stuff, but growers want to see what if does in the difficult areas. Enjoy the videos and let us know if you have any questions.