Hello All,
I want to share with you my experiences and findings using augur to drill holes for plantation.
Equipment details
Equipment: Augur & drill bit
Vendor: Hitachi
Cost: About 40,000 (for both)
This was the marketing pitch and requirements:
keep land 30% wet
should drill hole up to 1.5 to 2 ft in about 15 to 30 secs
My findings
Soil type: Red sandy soil
Hole when soil was partially wet : drilled hole upto 1.5 ft in about 30 secs
Hole when soil was quite wet: drilled hole upto 1.5 ft in little under 15 secs
Marketing pitch did hold up. Yay!
Economics findings
Since I was making a sizable investment, I wanted to check if my projections were correct or not.
Digging holes manually : A healthy male with little under 3 hours of day work dug holes manually using an iron rod (gunapam) in a dry to little moist soil. I measured his timings across 4 holes - digging and clearing up the soil when digging upto 4 holes took close to 15 minutes. Since it is a human, the equation would not be linear and times would begin to increase as day progresses.
We were planning to dig about 7 to 8 thousand pits across the farm.
Given the data, it might little fun for you to crunch the numbers along with labor costs and see if the investment was worth it or not.
By the way, it dug the pits over the farm like a charm. We were digging holes after it rained and the soil was moist enough. We held off when it was not moist enough.
In addition, 1.5 to 2 ft deep pits are not required for many plantations and 6 inches deep is about right. We dug holes for sowing drumstick seeds to about this depth. In this case it takes more time to move the equipment from hole to hole than the actual digging. Nice!
@Biju - If you have not already dug your pits, definitely take a look at this nice equipment.
Goes without saying, these are my findings and my takeaways. Please do your due diligence and judgement to arrive at your decision in case you decide to purchase this equipment.
Unfortunately I was not able to capture much photos, video. I have attached the picture of a pit dug using the equipment.
Happy farming. Jai Hind.
Raj