Last week I attended a demonstration of an imported, Italian manufactured undervine slasher. It was being touted as “tomorrows technology available today“. The machine is being manufactured by Fischer. My good friend, colleague and winemaker of Gherardi wines - Jurg Muggli - is the sole distributor in Australia.

He has been waxing lyrical for years about this machine. I have been hearing nothing but how there isn’t anything available in Australia which comes near to the job it does. I was also told that it can mow under the vine and very close to posts and vines with a very good result.  I was also told how it will reduce tractor passes, reduce soil compaction, eliminate pruning sweeping as well ensure a cleaner overall vineyard.

I must admit that I was sceptical on it’s robustness and whether the job it was suppose to do could in fact be done. More and more of us are wanting to cut down on the use of herbicides and have been hanging out for “the perfect undervine mower”!

Well, I must say I was very impressed. The machine is extremely robust, built of very thick steel, well finished yet not excessively complicated. It is PTO driven with its own hydraulic oil supply.

The sensitivity of the retractable mowing domes was impressive as was the job done. The blades are very durable and even managed to mulch prunings left both under the vine and in the mid row.

This pic shows the vine row and inter-row prior to mowing.

This is the completed job - very impressive!

 The recoil action was very sensitive and tit should be noted that the size of the dome is dependent on the vine spacing along the row. The closer the vine then you would opt for a smaller disc size.

 The outrigger domes actually float along the ground surface as they are on a concave metal disc which determines the depth of cut or the the height of the grass left. This ensures that the blades, as far as one can tell, do not plough into the soil should the ground become uneven.

There was very keen interest from those who attended and a number of orders to be placed over the coming days.

Jur Muggli can be contacted for further information via email at jmuggli@fischeraustralis.com.au

Vineman

Technorati Tags: Fischer, Gherardi, slasher, PTO, compaction

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Vineman, Vineman Equipment, viticulture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.