Hello,
So, fresh from reading posts about cover crops and about the younger, impatient generations desire to work against nature, I thought I would post this here. About 2 months ago I went and had a rummage in my fields of OSR. Pleasingly they were nicely cracked and had no weeds in them. So I swathed them to reduce nasty herbicides etc etc. Day after they were swathed, we had about an inch of rain. Combined them last week and had them limed and I thought I would direct drill some with wheat this year as they were in such good order.
We had an inch and a half plus of rain in the recent storms, so I went down on my bike to have a look. There are bloody 2" high blackgrass plants with heads on them sticking out of the cracks which have now filled in, and water stood in the tramlines.
Could someone sugest what I could do? My instant reaction is to get the sprayer out and spray the lot off, including my lovely carpet of 2 leaf volunteer OSR, with 3 litres of roundup. Then the tramlines would be properly forked, and I would end up sitting waiting for it to dry and go and rip the lot up and start again.
Nature wants this land to be grass, but until the end of next harvest when I have paid for all my kit, and hopefully there is a decent HLS replacement then that is not a choice I can make. My other plan was to spray the junk off, ruffle the tramlines with the subsoiler when its drier, and drill some fresh cover into it to take it through until spring for a spring crop.
Any thoughts welcome please.
Tim.
So, fresh from reading posts about cover crops and about the younger, impatient generations desire to work against nature, I thought I would post this here. About 2 months ago I went and had a rummage in my fields of OSR. Pleasingly they were nicely cracked and had no weeds in them. So I swathed them to reduce nasty herbicides etc etc. Day after they were swathed, we had about an inch of rain. Combined them last week and had them limed and I thought I would direct drill some with wheat this year as they were in such good order.
We had an inch and a half plus of rain in the recent storms, so I went down on my bike to have a look. There are bloody 2" high blackgrass plants with heads on them sticking out of the cracks which have now filled in, and water stood in the tramlines.
Could someone sugest what I could do? My instant reaction is to get the sprayer out and spray the lot off, including my lovely carpet of 2 leaf volunteer OSR, with 3 litres of roundup. Then the tramlines would be properly forked, and I would end up sitting waiting for it to dry and go and rip the lot up and start again.
Nature wants this land to be grass, but until the end of next harvest when I have paid for all my kit, and hopefully there is a decent HLS replacement then that is not a choice I can make. My other plan was to spray the junk off, ruffle the tramlines with the subsoiler when its drier, and drill some fresh cover into it to take it through until spring for a spring crop.
Any thoughts welcome please.
Tim.