In 2017, we launched a very high accuracy hoe.
With 18 years of recognised experience in the field of cereal crop hoeing from 14 centimetres up, we have now taken the next step.
The hoe we are presenting was designed at the behest of a customer to hoe 7cm row spacing using specific 4.5cm wide blades and well-controlled working depth with an accuracy level of 2cm.
Very compact once installed at the back of the tractor, the hoe is fully autonomous to avoid any disruption from the tractor’s movements.
The Garford hoe is groundbreaking in the sense that it is unsurpassed in terms of accuracy. Manual hoeing is not option with young shoots, as it would take too much time and require too much staff per hectare.
Such highly fragile crops, planted in rows 7cm apart, call for a solution to issues such as increasingly stringent regulations, the need for lower FTI, resistance problems and a workforce that is becoming scarce and hard to manage.
With lots of R&D work, we succeeded in meeting the following demands:

• Automatic management of the hoe’s stabilising feature with regards to walking spaces
• Automatic management of camera height in relation to planks
• Development of our console’s programme for row picture analysis, when closer
• New 2017 cameras to “read” the planks and analyse as many rows as possible
• Specially designed ploughshares to avoid disrupting rows while still hoeing in between rows.