The aisles at this year’s Lamma show were packed to the gunnels with the latest cultivation kit, providing the perfect opportunity for those looking to upgrade their tillage setup.

Age-old technology like ploughs and power harrows rubbed shoulders with a few new ideas, such as Claydon’s Terrastar and Einbock’s upgraded camera-based weeding system.

Here are a few of our favourites:

TWB Alternator

Lincolnshire manufacturer TWB has added another row of discs to its heavy metal Alternator cultivator.

The new arrangement is designed to run instead of levelling boards and flatten off the surface just before the packer. It adds about £3,500 to the price tag but it doesn’t require a whole lot more horsepower.

The 4.5m version on the stand will need the fat end of 400hp to do a decent job, which is Caterpillar crawler territory. The two rows of discs at the front take some pulling, and it’s possible to push the second row in a bit deeper provided you’ve got the horsepower to do it.

Behind those is a row of subsoiler legs that will dig down to 350mm to loosen up the rooting zone. Shear tab protection should prevent any of the legs getting bent and is less of a faff than traditional shear bolts.

The asking price is £40,000, though you’ll have to pay a few quid extra if you want hydraulic brakes.

See also: 5 eye-catching muck and slurry machines on show

Cousins harrow

Cambridgeshire firm Cousins caught the eye with a 6m version of its combination harrow.

Front tines are designed to chip at clods rather than haul them out of the ground, so are set to run roughly 10cm below the surface. Levelling boards run behind the tines and their position heavily affects the size of tractor required on the front.

The rubber packer presses the soil back down without encouraging too much of it to stick to the roller, ahead of a gang of spring tines and a big crumbler at the back.

The crumbler diameter has been upped to 600mm to increase the number of bars that are in contact with the ground at any one time. The new design should help maintain the working depth consistency even as soil types change.

The 6m version will take as little as 200hp to pull and has a list price of £25,000, but widths extend up to 8m for those that want to cover the ground even quicker.

Einbock Chopstar

The job of keeping weeds at bay without herbicides has traditionally required some expert driving skills, but with more laser and camera equipment coming to the market things are getting a whole lot easier.

Einbock’s Chopstar is imported to the UK by Norfolk-based Terrington Machinery and is available with 12, 16, 24 and 32 rows, though things can be quickly adjusted to suit different sowing widths.

Einbock designed its own row guidance system but uses Claas cameras to scout out the position of plants and make adjustments accordingly. It’s particularly useful for those running hoes on the tractor rear linkage, where it’s more difficult to keep an eye on the position of the coulter in relation to the crop rows.

Realistic travel speed is about 10kph and the company reckons drivers can practically double their output with the camera system fitted.

The only catch is the cost – it adds about £18,000 to the price of the weeder. The hoe itself costs between £10,000 and £23,000 depending on the width and number of rows.

Hubert ploughs

The iconic apple green livery of Dowdeswell will live on after Agri Hire made arrangements to start building its own mainframe and leg bracket to fit the defunct firm’s ploughs.

Dowdeswell folded last summer, although the parts and service side of the business continues to operate and ensures existing customers will have a reliable source of spare parts.

Agri Hire had previously been a Dowdeswell dealer and parts stockist and, although the new ploughs now come with a Hubert badge, they are practically identical to the implements built by the Warwickshire firm.

Buyers can order their ploughs with between five and nine bodies, and there’s the option of running them on land or in the furrow. Hydraulic offset and furrow adjustment are also part of the package.

Assembly takes place at Agri Hire’s Ipswich base and the pricing will remain almost the same as equivalent Dowdeswells, so expect to see a £22,000 ticket price on a 6+1 furrow 145.

Bullock Tillage Tinecut

Buyers after a reasonably-priced cultivation tool have another option to add to the list after Malvern-based Bullock Tillage revealed several new machines.

The Tinecut cultivator comes with six 20mm low-draught subsoiler legs protected by shear bolts and spaced 540mm apart.

They are designed to work down to 450mm and are followed by two rows of 510mm serrated discs mounted on rubber shock absorbers. A steel packer does the business at the back and there’s also the option of fitting an Airseeder for small seed drilling at the same time.

Total weight is about 2,200kg and power requirements will vary with soil type up to about 250hp. The asking price is a cheap-sounding £6,900.

Claydon Terrastar

Direct drilling specialist Claydon has come up with a new take on the stubble cultivator that does a more aggressive job that its straw rake.

Instead of tines, the Terrastar uses four angled rotors with a series of knives along their length that lift and cultivate the soil surface, creating a fine tilth.

The maker says this provides ideal conditions for weed seeds to germinate, helps with drainage and doesn’t interfere with the soil’s ability to carry machines.

Once seeds have germinated a pass with a straw harrow apparently wipes out young weeds without the need to spray.

Like the straw rake, the Terrastar is designed to cover large areas cheaply and can zip along at speeds or around 15kph.

At the moment there’s just one 6.11m version available which costs £15,000. An optional tined following harrow is also available.

Lemken Heliodor 9

Lemken has introduced a new disc cultivator with 510mm discs that plugs the gap between its existing small- and big-disc machines.

The Heliodor 9 sits between the maker’s Rubin primary cultivator and Heliodor 8 secondary cultivator and is designed to do a decent job of both those tasks.

Optional hydraulic levelling boards are available at the front as well and full hydraulic depth adjustment. List price is £25,652.