XtraBlatt Issue 02-2020
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AT WORK<br />
1<br />
3<br />
1 As part of the grassland ecological management, the Dortmund<br />
Parks Department has invested in new machinery including a<br />
round baler from Krone.<br />
2 In favour of extensive grassland management: Jürgen Hundorf,<br />
planner in the Dortmund Parks Department.<br />
2<br />
3 Nature-friendly and insect saving cutterbar mowing.<br />
DORTMUND PARKS DEPARTMENT<br />
NATURE-<br />
NEAR CITY<br />
PARKLAND<br />
More usually, round balers are to be seen on<br />
farms or in an agricultural contractor’s fleet.<br />
There’re seldom used on municipal green<br />
areas. But the city of Dortmund proves the<br />
exception.<br />
Westfalenpark in Dortmund. While<br />
the morning commuters join the<br />
traffic jams on the adjacent B 54, a team<br />
from the city parks department get to work.<br />
A sizeable patch of meadow landscaped<br />
around a road junction must be mowed. But<br />
not, as in earlier years, using a cost-efficient<br />
and speedy mulcher. Instead, a tractor and<br />
cutterbar mower go into action. Admittedly,<br />
the equipment is not as simple as a mulcher.<br />
But substantially less insects fall victim to<br />
the mowing operation. “A few years ago,<br />
we changed the way we look after our<br />
grassland areas and started extensive<br />
methods”, says Jürgen Hundorf, planner<br />
in the Dortmund Parks Department, responsible<br />
for a total 400 ha within the city<br />
precincts. Nowadays, around half of this<br />
is managed extensively. “These areas are<br />
cut twice yearly with cutterbar mower”,<br />
says Soenke Janssen, agricultural master<br />
craftsman and responsible within the parks<br />
department for the Technical Service West.<br />
The changeover from mulching to cutterbar<br />
mowing is, however, not the only adjustment<br />
in machinery used. Whereas the<br />
mulched vegetation is left lying on the surface,<br />
the cut grass has to be removed after<br />
a few days. Firstly, it’s swathed by a tractor<br />
mounted band rake, then round baled.<br />
Especially for this, the Park Department in<br />
early 2<strong>02</strong>0 bought a Krone Bellima F130. The<br />
investment in the machinery needed for an<br />
organically managed parkland system is not<br />
insignificant, but is necessary”, emphasises<br />
Soenke Janssen. There was no resistance to<br />
the required investment.<br />
THE RIGHT KIT<br />
The Bellima F130 represented the baler<br />
Soenke Janssen really wanted when the<br />
tenders were submitted. “The round baler<br />
is comparably light, very compact and suits<br />
very well our communal tractor, which is<br />
smaller than the tractors used on farms”,<br />
he explains.<br />
The new Dortmund biodiversity is especially<br />
impressive taking the example of wildlife<br />
on the meadows around a housing district<br />
in the southwest of the city. The meadow<br />
flowers in widely varied colours were in the<br />
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