F%%kin docks

rhifsaith

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Location
Tregaron
Best way to clean a field up of the bloody things?
Was thinking of drilling with brassicas after roundup 1st year.Would following that be best with something like tornado for a few years so i could spray with dockstar, then a full reseed in 2 years?
 

milkloss

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
I'm not sure there's really enough research on the whole dormancy thing to be fair. Sure, there might be some after 70 years, but how many?

anyhow... we're going for only trying to disturb the top few inches of soil and regular spraying. Seems to be working but to be honest a lot of docks isn't much worse than a few...,,,, they still need spraying.
 

Devonian

Member
We find that they still come back in year 2 of a re-seed, even following 2 or 3 years of cereals or maize. Bloody things.

Never seen them so bad this year since the dry spell. Missed the boat with the spray after first cut, so definitely gonna hit them with hurlo this time around, and again next spring. I know we are going to lose our clover, but if we can get on top of them, planning to stitch the clover back in next year.
 

Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
I'm spraying mine next week with full rate and wetter , will leave till end of August to see if any come back if they do spray again and drill a 4 year Ley , ist a cutting ley so probably won't bother with clover so any trouble next year I can hit them with

Fluroxypyr that is effective and relatively cheap
I've used that alongside Dockstar, one third the price and just as good
 
Best way to clean a field up of the bloody things?
Was thinking of drilling with brassicas after roundup 1st year.Would following that be best with something like tornado for a few years so i could spray with dockstar, then a full reseed in 2 years?
Glyphosate old sward, reseed (preferably spring) and spray seedlings with Pastor
 

Raider112

Member
If they aren't too bad keeping them from getting any worse with a knapsack sprayer used to be ok but the modern sprays aren't as effective. Asulox was the stuff but I don't think you can get it now.
 
Try farming organically - we find we are managing them reasonably well by using multi-cut silage , cutting every 4 weeks, and rotational grazing and premowing - 18 to 24 day rotation. When we get caught Out is drought. The docks run to head before the grass grows which means we do get them heading.
our reseed policy is winter oats, stubble turnips and undersown spring barley. The oats depress the amount of docks due to the density of the canopy - we find dead dockplants. We get docks germinating in the turnips but the sheep hammer those. We get them coming back in the spring barley but not strongly and then the regrowth is into rotational grazing or multi cut silage.
We have learned to live with them , tolerate them and manage them as best we can - Certainly I don’t think they adversely affect our grass production.
 
Docks won't arrive if the sward is kept happy and dominating. The second you start trampling them or driving over them and leaving bare ground, weeds are going to turn up.

Putting in a break crop and using the correct sequence of chemistry will ensure all new leys are weed free and stay that way.
Sprayed a paddock with with Dow (Corteva) Envy this year (fluroxypyr / florasulam) and it did a proper number on buttercups and docks.

You can add more fluroxypyr to envy to stiffen it on docks.

Killing docks in a cereal crop is childsplay, 10g of ally will do it.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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