The most important aspect of growing high-quality potatoes is ensuring that the soil has been prop¬erly prepared prior to planting. In order to improve crop quality and yield, it is essential to remove stones and large clods, while maintaining a healthy soil structure. Not only does this reduce damage on the harvested crop and wear on the harvesting/grading machinery, but it also gives the tractor and trailers traction at harvest time, as the stone is situated under the tyres and away from the plan¬tation bed.
Bedformers
The bed maker is designed to go into pre-cultivated ground, both to create beds for destoning and aeriating the soil. It is key for the bed maker to get as much soil as possible out of the trench and into the bed. This gives the destoner the maximum potential.
Bedtillers
In heavier soil types or lay ground, the bed tilling process can be appropriate. The ScanStone bed tiller is an efficient and effective machine, primarily due to having quick change blades.
Depending on the rotor speed, the bed tiller can do a very fine job or a rougher job depending on how much fuel and energy the farmer wishes to use. The amount of bed tilling should be proportional to the forward speed of the destoner.
Destoners
ScanStone destoners are high-performance soil separation machines designed to remove stones and clods from agricultural beds, primarily for root crops like potatoes and carrots. Based in Scotland, ScanStone manufactures these machines to operate in harsh, stony conditions to enhance crop harvesting efficiency, reduce tuber damage, and improve machine reliability.
The ScanStone destoner range comprises of six models. Starting with the 3 webber, which is a lightweight nimble machine for smaller fields, we have 4 webber, 5 webber S and 5 webber L in the web category of our machines. We also have a fixed star machine and a vari-star machine. Each machine can come with various specifications and with or without a stone box.
Elevator
The top part of the elevator is a goose-neck and is able to be controlled up and down with hydraulics. The width and height of the flights are now adequate to carry a large capacity of stone up the elevator.
The discharge point is directly in the centre of the second bed, meaning that a cart or trailer can be filled easily without the need for the trailer or tractor to be running on separated beds. This means two things; The trailer tractor is running on a hard surface and not in soft ground, and the separated beds are left undisturbed should the potato planting process follow on immediately afterwards.
Control Box
The dealer or service manager can access the advanced settings to adjust options such as the oil flow and setting up a new attachment such as stone box or elevator.
You can see how many hours the machine has done, and you can save and reset 2 trips. You can see the main info on the machine, such as serial number, year of manufacture and model number.
Testimonials
William and Alison Skea from ScanStone visited Fairlie Fresh, to see James Fairlie and his father Ian, and find out how they got on with their 2 new 5 Webber destoners after an uninterrupted season.
