Objectives
The objectives of this study were to develop a lower cost, more effective method to put long intact flax straw on the ground in a thin layer to ensure faster, consistent retting of the flax straw and, as a result, to increase the profits flowing to flax farmers.
Project Description
This project initially carried out a series of trials with land rollers, wheeled vehicles and tractors as well as with weighted sleds. The disappointing results led to trying a series of rotary and sickle mowers to see if modifying such cutting devices could meet the goals of this project. Initial results with a modified 15-foot Schulte prototype, model X-315, rotary mower gave acceptable results in average stands of oilseed flax, but this mower was a prototype, and further modifications were not possible after it was taken to Texas for safety testing. Trials with a commonly used 15-foot Schulte model S-150 were only moderately satisfactory even after some additional modifications to shields and baffles were carried out. The most successful trials were carried out with an 18-foot Rowse double bar (sickle) mower set to cut as low as possible. Although the Rowse mower is not now commonly used in Saskatchewan, it is made in the USA, it can be used for haying operations, it is cheaper than a Schulte mower, it is easier to transport, and it takes less power to operate than a Schulte mower of roughly the same size. Partial budgets that compare the operation of land rollers, Schulte rotary mowers and Rowse sickle mowers show that the only option ($3.37/acre) that is cheaper than the Rowse mower ($3.90/acre) is a single pass with a land roller. However, a single pass with a land roller is often not enough to knock all the flax straw down. Often two or more passes with a roller are required and even then, the straw is not guaranteed to be knocked down. This would boost rolling costs to more than twice that of a Rowse mower. Hence, this study has shown that a Rowse mower is a lower cost, more effective method to put long intact flax straw on the ground in a thin layer. The only other method that might give as good a quality of straw is a single or double or triple rolling. Since most fields would have to be rolled on average 2.5 times, the Rowse mower offers savings of about $4.52/acre relative to the next best alternative. In an average flax field of 150 acres, this would represent a saving of $678 per field, if a farmer used it to prepare his field for consistent straw retting.
