The Geiger Lund Selective Asparagus Harvester
Machine harvest your asparagus!
Dramatically reduce your labor force, and all of those expenses that go with it.
Take a look at the movie clips and see the machine running back in 2007 and check out the "How It Works pages".
We've made significant improvements to the machine since the movies were taken, including narrower blades and a higher resolution optical detection system.
Three Row Selective Asparagus Harvester 24 Inch Cutting Swath 48" Row Centers
 Drawing of a 3 row tractor pull type asparagus harvester with a 24 inch wide cutting swath and 48 " row centers. |
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Side View |
Top View |
Front View |
Single Row |
| Click on the above image to enlarge | |||
We've put together some drawings of a typical 3 row machine set up for a cut width of 24 inches which should cover most plantings, and a row center distance of 48" or any larger center distance. Additional Drawings of the 3 row machine.
We can build whatever configuration you need to fit your operation. Trimming saws can be included on the sorting platform if you want the spears to arrive at the packing shed already cut to length. That would eliminate the need to haul away butts, and further reduce the costs at least for some packing sheds. I think the spears could probably be sorted as well.
The spears are clean, no dirt is picked up by the machine.
Asparagus is a difficult crop to harvest. Unlike most other machine harvested products like tomatoes, potatoes, and carrots, which you harvest in one pass through the field, with asparagus you must harvest the spears on the same field over and over during the season. During much of the season it must be harvested every day. Missing even a few hours due to a machine being down could be a disaster.
Asparagus spears do not wait...they grow like the dickens. This means that an asparagus harvester must be an ultra-reliable machine. If for some reason there is a breakdown, it must be easy to obtain parts and the machine must be simple and easy to repair.
The Geiger Lund asparagus harvester is a simple machine, easy to understand, easy to operate, extremely reliable, easy to get parts for, and easy to fix should anything go wrong. There is virtually no daily maintenance required. You can run the machine 24 hours a day.
The harvester has an estimated harvesting speed of from 1.5 mph to 2.5 mph. The cut timing is accurate from 0.5 mph to 4 mph. Field conditions and spear density determine the actual harvesting speed. The timing is automatic, you just drive and the machine provides an accurate cut no matter what speed you are traveling. At 1.5 mph a three row machine on 54 inch centers would harvest about 2.5 acres per hour. The machine is capable of running 24 hours a day. Another way of looking at it is the machine would do about 50 acres in 20 hours.
A study done by Washington State University showed that harvesting the asparagus at intervals of 24 hours, 36 hours and even 48 hours did not statistically change the break even between hand harvesting and Machine harvesting. This might indicate that the 50 acres per season machine could actually do 100 acres per season making the grower much more profit from each machine. I'm just saying....
Photo of our experimental harvester in 2006
Picture of our tractor-pull type experimental single row selective mechanical asparagus
harvester.
The Geiger Lund selective
asparagus harvester is ready for production. The harvesters
will be custom built to fit your field requirements. We just
need to know the row centers, harvestable width of the beds, and how
many rows. With this information we can quote you a machine.
We can build you a one, two, three, or four row harvester. If you wish we can provide a trimming saw at the sorting area. That way the spears are already trimmed to length when they get to the packing shed, and you will have little or no butts to haul off.
The cutters have 2" wide blades on 1-3/4" centers.
Harvesting speed ranges from about 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 mph depending on field conditions and spear density.
The harvested spears are clean
and undamaged. The harvester is very gentle. Washington
State University studied the effects of harvester on the harvested
spears even after putting them in cold storage for over a week.
They found no damage from machine harvesting the spears. 
The machine requires only minimal
maintenance, consisting mainly of checking the hydraulic fluid level
and the air filter. There are no grease fittings to grease or chains
to oil. All of the ball bearings used are sealed bearings with very
light loads and are run at low rpm resulting in extremely long life.
The fully repairable air cylinders are built more like heavy duty
hydraulic cylinders than air cylinders, with large 5/8 inch diameter
stainless steel piston rods and heavy wall steel tubing barrels. The cylinders run on dry
air thus there are no lubricators to fill or maintain.
The conveyors run at slow speeds, have virtually no load, and are
V-belt guided for trouble free operation and long life.
The air compressor is a standard piston type compressor rated for a
100% duty cycle. The life of these compressors is typically
50,000 hours. Occasional cleaning of the air filter is
the only maintenance.
How it works
More Drawings of a 3 row machine.
Please check out the videos of the harvester:
Movie clips They are
worth viewing.
Or visit YouTube and search for "Asparagus Harvester".
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