- Location
- east yorkshire
2to 3 years depending on the field
Sowing on the green and slug pellets
- Thread starter Cow1
- Start date
- Location
- CW5 Cheshire
I suppose every farm will be different, in my case I started to notice a difference in year 4. The reduced slug pressure is quite evident now, a ploughing neighbour only growing wheat and barley has used more pellets and had more damage than me this year.
- Location
- east yorkshire
2to 3yrs depending on the fields
SilliamWhale
Member
I find that a decent rule of thumb too. I find the second year after no till can be a bit frustrating - soil not quite structured much, drainage a bit poorer, not enough worms yet etc.
- Location
- Essex Coast
Just thinking about that, do you think worms might eat slug eggs? They like anything with a bit of protein in it, if they are prepared to graze fusarium off wheat straw, slug eggs would make a nice juicy meal. I could find quite big slugs in a bean stubble a few weeks ago but scratching around, never did see any eggs, just loads of worms. I put some Slux on after drilling and can't find any now.
What are you no tilling with ?
There is a BIG difference between dd / no till and zero till / drilling on the green
Slug were at there worst here when we dd'ed
SilliamWhale
Member
I doubt it but not sure why. Of course beetles and nematodes do and we don't tend to see them as one is nocturnal and the other a bit odd!
The other thing is that the slugs have got plenty of distraction in no till.
I have seen a worm looking like it was eating slug eggs, I think slug numbers do decline as worm number increases
On my soil slugs never got worse under zero till but were very high back in our strip till / dd days mostly due to lack of ability to consolidate after such drills and insuffucient trash clearance to deal with high levels of green cover
No Worries
Member
- Location
- Cheshire
My mistake, I mean the difference between what many call dd / strip till ie 1 pass establishment vs low disturbance zerotil / no till seeding ultra low disturbance
With reference to slugs IMO zerotill achieves much better levels of consolidation as soil isn't loosened in the first place, with strip till , dd or one pass seeding where soil is disturbed you have to re consolidate and that's almost impossible to do as well as had there been no loosening in the first place
Though all establishment methods I have used over my soils from plough, min till, dd through to zerotil I have noticed slug issues are in direct relationship with looseness of soil and that the more soil is moved the harder it is to achieve good consolidation again
The strip till drills also can't cope with the qty of green you need to keep slugs off the cash crop, my worry about the pics posted in this tread is there was never enough to keep the slugs on the OSR from the start and the strip till drill used has left soil loose enough for slug activity to still be easy
yellow belly
Member
- Location
- south west lincolnshire
I would be more concerned in fields part fields after oil seed rape that had not greened up as the slug pressure prevents the rape from getting established
where the osr regrowth is obviously undamaged from slugs the slug risk is much reduced
where the osr regrowth is obviously undamaged from slugs the slug risk is much reduced
- Location
- east yorkshire
I drill with a big disc so very
Dan Powell
Member
- Location
- Shropshire
Agree. No problems where loads of volunteer OSR. It's the patches that get bared off before drilling that get hammered.
We have had massive issues with slugs here this year, on what is non-sluggy ground under a plough regime. It vexes father, but I'm hoping @Richard III is right and things will improve with time - we're only year 1-2 here. Our agronomist is saying slugs a massive issue this year under all management types, so maybe just down to weather patterns. Need a cold winter to sort the buggers out.
I do think that the main lesson for me this year is that seedbed consolidation needs more attention. Later sown crops were rolled more slowly, but I still think I may need a heavier roller or a single disc drill, rather than a triple disc and a tine drill, neither of which do slot closure very well.
- Location
- CW5 Cheshire
My crops are full of large slugs all summer, a stroll up a tramline in late evening in June is not a pleasant experience. When ever I pull a wild oat plant out there is also a cluster of large slugs around it's base, however by establishment time they seem to have vanished or not a problem. In years 2 and 3 I worried a lot about slugs, but I'm much more relaxed now, perhaps excepting the first week of an OSR crops life.
Sowing on the green after rape is an important innovation IMHO.
Sowing on the green after rape is an important innovation IMHO.
- Location
- east yorkshire
not convinced, when they finish eating the vol osr, they set about shredding the wheat plants which are only at one leaf , so doesn't take long to finish the plant off
Johndeere
Member
- Location
- Oxfordshire
On the green today with the dts, she loved it, ran nice and clean with no blocking, will monitor slug activity but the volunteer rape wasn't being grazed
- Location
- CW5 Cheshire
The amount of cover you are drilling into looks good to me, but I would need a lot of slug pellets here if I moved that much soil and left so little green behind. To make it work right I have to leave enough green to feed the slugs until the wheat gets to at least 3 leaf and not produce clods for them to move around in, but it is not to say it won't work for you.
Drill is coping but ground too brown after to keep them in OSR and off wheat IMO
I think for this technique to work you need to be low disturbance drilling
- Location
- CW5 Cheshire
- Location
- Nr Malvern... SW Worcestershire
I have drilled wheat into a white clover "cover" which appears to be indestructible, done passes with the Carrier along with Sub-lift + Carrier on a couple of strips combined with three applications of Glyphosate (+ a well known broad-leaf weed herbicide ) but still it grows. The slugs have all but destroyed the emerging wheat despite pellets being applied. The slugs are living on the soil surface just under the clover and have no interest in coming up to eat the pellets. The field has never had a crop of rape on it and came out of a two year ley last Autumn.
We have had great success direct-drilling into rape volunteers but wanted to take the technique up a notch to see if we could grow two wheats using clover as a cover/break between the two wheats, but it looks like being a bit of a failure. Elsewhere on the farm we have not seen a single slug even after spring rape.
) but still it grows. The slugs have all but destroyed the emerging wheat despite pellets being applied. The slugs are living on the soil surface just under the clover and have no interest in coming up to eat the pellets. The field has never had a crop of rape on it and came out of a two year ley last Autumn.We have had great success direct-drilling into rape volunteers but wanted to take the technique up a notch to see if we could grow two wheats using clover as a cover/break between the two wheats, but it looks like being a bit of a failure. Elsewhere on the farm we have not seen a single slug even after spring rape.