WITH over 45 years of farming experience, Ray Harrington has invented the Harrington Seed Destructor to potentially save Australian agriculture billions in its fight against herbicide resistance.

Mr Harrington, from Darkan, WA, says enclosed trailers known as chaff carts are traditionally used by farmers to tow behind grain harvesting machinery to collect weed seeds that would normally be left to grow in the paddock.

Ray Harrington with the Harrington Seed Destructor / Image: Courtesy GRDC

The Harrington Seed Destructor (HSD) is designed to replace the chaff cart as a trail-behind unit, consisting of chaff and straw delivery systems and a diesel motor as the power source.

“Chaff carts were brought into WA from Canada 35 years ago. The idea of collecting the weed seeds is not new, it’s just common sense,” Mr Harrington says.

“When creating the HSD, I wanted to evolve the system and I thought about all the things I didn’t want to deal with anymore with a chaff cart.

“Chaff heaps don’t always burn properly and can be quite dangerous if they burn throughout the night and are exposed to winds.

“Also, a huge amount of rye grass blows out the top of it, whereas mine is a completely sealed system.”

Mr Harrington began his research into the destruction of weed seeds and says he decided after some trial and error that stock feed-producing hammermills could also be used to process and crush weed seeds.

“I spoke to my brother who manages a farm in Narrogin that has a pellet mill and said I wanted to render this material with a hammermill.

“He told me don’t waste your time and explained to me why it wouldn’t work.

“He said you won’t get the capacity, you won’t get the accuracy, just think of some other way to do what you want to do.

“Then we stumbled upon this bit of technology which is 80 years old and we adapted it and made it work for us.”

According to Mr Harrington, ryegrass and radish, both common weeds found in WA paddocks, are destroyed efficiently by the HSD.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve got three ryegrasses a square metre, just don’t let those 600 seeds go back in the ground and that’s the thinking behind it.

“Radish is looming as an even bigger problem in WA but it gets completely sucked up by the machine and as it’s slightly green at harvest, it just turns it into liquid.”

Mr Harrington says dealing with weed seeds is nothing new for grain growers and his process of evolving the system began when he saw other farmers dealing with it 15-20 years ago.

“I decided all those years ago to try and do something about it and it’s taken me 14 years to come up with the answer.”

Further information: Ray Harrington, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Comments (2)

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written by Jo, June 20, 2010

Getting rid of recurring weeds. I live in the outer metro-suburb, have 2.5 acres of property, and millions of weeds. The birds congregate in the trees, & the dropping germinate, and weeds spread like cancer - We cannot keep up due to physiological injuries sustained in a major vehicle accident that causes severe physical limitation. I do not want to use herbicides. I want to protect much of the natural vegetation, gardenbeds, bandicot & frog habitat, laying hens, vegetable patch. And most importantly operate a childcare service on the property.
Can someone suggest a solution that is not labour intensive. Would a Butane burner kill selective areas of weeds, and where would I obtain one from.
If I fail to overcome this challenge - it will be chemicals or sell-up, neither is on my agenda at present.
Thank you.

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written by ray harrington, June 24, 2010

I believe the only way to solve your problem is to adopt a seed set strategy ie to annualy cut the top off the weeds before they set seed in spring time . Ray Harrington