Berti the Monster.

[@GR19611]

Well that saves a lot of work.👍

[@nutkinfarm]

Haha yes it does, Golden! Good mulch for the trees too.

[@kdegraa]

Strong Berti.

[@nutkinfarm]

It is. Each of those hammers on the cylinder are at least 2 kg of solid steel.

[@kdegraa]

@@nutkinfarm wow spinning how many RPM? From what I understand a well managed maca orchard has the ground mulched before the first harvest to crush sticks & other debris that could clog up the harvester. After the final harvest the orchard floor is mulched again to crush remaining nuts so they are not a food source for pests & vermin. What about during harvesting & keeping the grass down? A normal rotary mower would be better then I guess as the flail mower’s hammers would crush nuts that should be harvested. I’m thinking of buying a flail mower, something that can be offset & articulated, not as big as Berti though, something with a cutting width of 1.8 meters. Looking at different options, mainly cheaper Chinese & more expensive Italian mowers. By the way it looks like the skirting of the trees has been successful. The tractor was not being bashed by the trees. We are trying to prune our trees so the first branches come out somewhere around a meter high & have them growing straight up with one trunk. Hopefully they will work.

[@nutkinfarm]

@@kdegraa I’m not sure of the rpm of the cylinder but the PTO from the tractor would be the standard 540. The pre-harvest mulch is essential, while I’d regard the post-harvest one as a bit more of a luxury. If you’re going to rake or broom from the inter-row back to the tree roots then you do need to mulch first. My own mulcher has much smaller hammers but it still takes my 85 hp Carraro to drive it. If you’re shopping around, I’d suggest going for hammers rather than flails. Flails are better for grass but aren’t great for sticks and nut debris.