Lyburn Farm, Wiltshire
- Leading supplier of Halloween pumpkin and squash for the wholesale trade.
- Grow around 150,000 pumpkins each year for supermarkets and PYO.
- Producer of organic vegetables and farmhouse cheese.
- Four generations of the family have worked the farm’s 500 acres.
Background
PD Smales & Son have grown pumpkin at Lyburn for some 40 years now, alongside the herd of 170 dairy cows. Jono Smales says the semi-automatic weeder has revolutionised their production.
“The machine has been a real game changer for growing pumpkins. It’s been extremely reliable, it was only a sixth of the price of a fully automatic robotic weeder, and the team of three needed to weed pumpkins now are four times as efficient as before”.
Jono, who uses a two-row version, says the Spapperi ensures the growing area remains weed-free to keep the crop in peak condition. Plus, by avoiding the use of herbicides they reap maximum crop yields.
“We wanted to move away from chemical weed control, plus the time and expense of manual hoeing. We used to use residual herbicides, but these were very expensive and often ineffective… they could also affect the pumpkin plants adversely too, which affected establishment and reduced the numbers we could supply”, he explains.
With only a team of two weeder operators plus a tractor driver needed, the Spapperi offers massive advantages:
The work rate achieved using the weeder and a team of three is the same as 12 people using hand hoes.
Asked if he would buy the same machine again, Jono has no doubts:
“Because it is less labour intensive it means the other nine people can be doing other work”, says Jono.
Interview as featured in The Farmers Guide, February 2021
