Driver’s view: Andrew Tucker’s Novag T-ForcePlus 440 no-till drill

We get the lowdown on the 4m Novag T-ForcePlus 440 drill owned by Monkton Farleigh Farms near Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, which is driven by farm manager Andrew Tucker.

See also: What’s in Your Shed? visits an Oxfordshire contractor and Cross Slot drill maker

What made you choose a Novag T-ForcePlus 440?

We were running a min-till system based around a Vaderstad Topdown cultivator and 6m Rapid drill, which had worked well for years.

But after a couple of seasons of poor establishment due to wet weather and a growing grassweed problem, we decided to try something different.

The estate has been in Higher Level Stewardship for the past five years, and has had Wildlife Estates status for the same length of time.

A no-till system seemed the best fit, so owner Sir Charles Hobhouse and I started looking at the drills on offer.

We did plenty of research, visiting both Jake Freestone and George Hosier, who have well-established no-till systems.

They were running Cross Slot drills and we were impressed with the T-shaped opener that places the seed and fertiliser either side of a slot cut by a disc.

This creates a good environment for the seed and reduces the importance of closing the slot, which seems to be a problem with some conventional no-till disc drills.

Novag’s T-ForcePlus drills work on the same principle as the Cross Slot and, having seen a machine working at Groundswell, we liked the way it was put together.

The high-standard spec also appealed, with a split main hopper and the option of two additional seeder units mounted at the rear.

There are no official UK Novag dealers, so we dealt directly with the team in France, who were very helpful.

Our machine is a 2020 T-ForcePlus 440 (4m-wide) ex-demonstrator that had been used at Groundswell and was being stored at Clive Bailye’s farm in Staffordshire.

We were able to go there and view it, and ended up buying it for about £100,000.

It arrived ready for the 2021 spring drilling campaign and Novag helped us get it set up and working properly.

There were a few video calls to head office as I got to grips with it, but it was a straightforward process.

When the drill arrived, the Vaderstad Topdown and Rapid were sold, so we’re fully committed to making the system work.

The only cultivation equipment we kept was the Cambridge roller, which comes in handy for conserving moisture and consolidating the surface.

How does it work?

Like a Cross Slot, there is a disc to make the opening and a T-shaped coulter that places seed to one side of the opening and fertiliser to the other.

This has several benefits, such as eliminating the problem of trash hairpinning and giving good seed-to-soil contact, without putting so much reliance on closing the slot.

Depth is controlled by a pair of adjustable closing wheels that push down either side of the opening. Row spacing is 19cm with a total of 21 coulters spread over two rows – one in front of the wheels and one behind.

The downsides of this system compared with a conventional disc drill are that it requires more power to pull and needs more pressure to get the coulters in the ground consistently.

As a result, our drill weighs a hefty 9.2t with the wing weights installed, and it asks for almost all the power our Fendt 724 has to offer.

We also have wheel weights fitted and 1,800kg of ballast on the front, so the tractor is almost 11t.

© James Andrews

Dropping from a 6m Vaderstad to the 4m Novag means drilling is a slower process, but we’re saving time and fuel overall as we’ve taken the cultivator out of the equation.

The drill’s split hopper can hold about 2t in the front section, 1t in the rear and it has two Accord-style metering systems that mean we can put down two products (usually seed and fertiliser) in a single pass.

As our drill was a well-specced demonstrator, it came with two optional 120-litre hoppers at the rear. These are piped to spreader plates, which make them ideal for applying slug pellets, starter fertilisers or small seeds.

I haven’t made full use of these yet, but they’re nice to have and give us plenty of options to play with in the future, particularly with cover and companion crops.

How has it performed?

The drill has done two full spring seasons and it’s just starting its second autumn. It’s gone well and there have been no problems other than a loose hydraulic connection and the odd coulter snapping in stony ground.

For a while, I didn’t realise this was happening, so I had a couple of misses where they had sheared off. Generally, I drill at about 10kph, but I now slow down a bit on the harshest ground and keep an eye out for breakages.

The first set of steel coulters also wore out after about 80ha, so I replaced these with hardened versions.

These are about five times the price, but they should last five times as long and reduce the amount of time I spend spannering. There are 42 of them at £100 apiece, so it’s a considerable investment.

I’ve been particularly impressed with the auto downforce system, which keeps the coulters working at the correct depth, regardless of the soil conditions.

© James Andrews

I’ve never struggled to get it in the ground as all the drill’s weight can be put onto the discs if needed.

The only time the system gets fooled is if one of the sensing discs is running on a tramline and attempts to put the drill in too deep. I keep a close eye on the pressure displayed in the screen and I manually override if needed.

It’s also amazing how well the drill plants into a tall cover crop, with no risk of it hooking trash and blocking up. You just don’t want to use it when it’s too wet on the surface.

Years of using the Vaderstad system meant our soils were already in decent condition, but I’m noticing a marked improvement since switching to the Novag.

The drill is getting easier to pull and diesel use is dropping too – this season’s cover crops took just 9 litres/ha to establish, compared with 13 litres/ha the first year.

Compaction and slumping aren’t big concern for us as our soils are thin, with plenty of stone underneath.

However, we try out best to avoid it, running the tractor on 710 rear tyres all year, having a combine on tracks and keeping trailers confined to tramlines as much as possible.

Yields are at least as good as they were using the old system, with our winter wheat averaging 7.5-8.5t/ha this season.

© James Andrews

What could be improved?

There is very little room for improvement, other than a few tweaks. Seed can be a bit slow to get to the coulters, so I wind some extra out in the corners to make sure I’ve drilled right up to the edge.

Originally, the drill came with a clevis drawbar, which would bang around horribly as the weight came on and off.

I’ve already swapped this for a Scharmuller ball hitch and the difference is amazing; it’s now silent and so much smoother to operate.

Another slightly awkward feature is that three of the front coulters are under the hopper, making it a pain to get in and change them.

On newer versions, I think these fold up with the wings so they can be accessed from the side.

On top of that, I’d like the hopper light to switch on with the screen, rather than being hooked directly to the tractor. If you forget to turn it off, you’re rewarded with a very flat battery in the morning.