Spring drilling on the green?

Michael S

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Matching Green
What are people's thoughts on drilling on the green into cover crops in the spring? I get the impression that the feeling is that it doesn't work well in general under normal UK conditions?
 

Fred

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Mid Northants
Ive tried it 3 times and each time has created issues, smearing , and cold wet soil , Personally now spray off early Jan ,
1 What is the soil type
2 What is the cover crop
3 What is the following crop
4 Do you have access to livestock
5 Tyne or disc
 

Michael S

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Matching Green
Ive tried it 3 times and each time has created issues, smearing , and cold wet soil , Personally now spray off early Jan ,
1 What is the soil type
2 What is the cover crop
3 What is the following crop
4 Do you have access to livestock
5 Tyne or disc
1 Ragdale and Hanslope clays.
2 Phacilia, vetch, linseed, berseem clover, oats plus volunteer forage rape(crop before wheat) and volunteer wheat.
3 Peas.
4 Maybe but unlikely.
5 Simtech or possibly Moore.
 

Andrew K

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Essex
I have sprayed our volunteer cover of Borage off which was approx 2 to 3 ft tall in December. I have not got the balls to leave it till Jan/feb as previous experience tends to back up the notion that too much cover too long will keep things wet on strong land in an average year. I think a thin cover would sometimes be ok in that scenario but usually we are struggling to dry things out and a Tine drill would probably struggle in wet and trashy going. We will DD though .
 
Last edited:

stroller

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Somerset UK
I have not had much success with dd in the spring, last year 5ha of dd linseed yielded as much as 3ha established with discs and a old air drill, both had cover crops sprayed off in Jan.
 
Spray off as soon as can travel from mid January
if it is too wet then we have to wait not worth the tramline damage to force it
plant to drill early April when conditions are dry enough
March planted crops followed by wet cold week are the most disappointing spring crop
cultivation type makes no difference the weather is the biggest factor
later drilling needs higher seed rates
 

tr250

Member
Location
Northants
Spray off as soon as can travel from mid January
if it is too wet then we have to wait not worth the tramline damage to force it
plant to drill early April when conditions are dry enough
March planted crops followed by wet cold week are the most disappointing spring crop
cultivation type makes no difference the weather is the biggest factor
later drilling needs higher seed rates
This☝
 

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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