Recent content by Andy004

A butterfly,a skipper of some sort.

I've got a Volvo XC90 and have been told they use one of these to test the handbrake - the new devices connect by bluetooth (and i guess wifi) direct to DVLA so there's no cheating!

Snarling Bee, Interesting you're going back to some ploughing, and interesting on the ergot issue, maybe we should monitor it. Two Tone - thanks for the comments, naming the system correctly isn't easy - for me, talking to non-agronomists, using 'conventional', min-till and zero-till seems the...

@Iben - would be nice to have one or 2 facts in the presentation, but fair comment! @Bogweevil - thanks very much for the link, just what i wanted, although a bit disaapointed the figure for zero-till is only 7% - i guess the paper was published 2019,so the figure would probably be a bit higher...

Hi Folks, Anyone know what area/% of arable area is zero tilled , minimal tilled and conventionally tilled please? I guess % of combinable crops would be the best. I'm giving a presentation on Friday and would like to include this. Many thanks Andrew

sorry if I missed this, but what hp tractor do you have on this?

Al R, many thanks, I appreciate your time, but, for a 6m2 plot, we’ll be sowing about 0.2 kg of seed, so we really need a wintersteiger or haldrup type seed distribution system. It’s the getting it into the soil I’m curious about. I’m concerned, if we have coulters that disturb the soil too...

Hi Folks, Thanks for the replies. Roy - some good points. To be clearer, at Rothamsted the farm team maintain a good set of equipment, and carry out all the machinery operations required for the trials work, as well as equipment to farm the commercial fields - and as mentioned above, we already...

Hi Steve R, thanks for the link, that looks interesting, however sometimes we only have less than 500g seed available, so we really need a plot drill mechanism to distribute the seed. Cheers

Hi folks, Thanks for the replies. Plan is we will get a plot drill and specify what seeding units we want, within reason, the drill will be strengthened to cope. I watched the simtech working last week and was surprised how much soil disturbance there was. However other folks think we are better...

Hi Simon, yes, and a jd, but we need a plot drill, and i'd appreciate some comments on tines v discs etc. We've used the simtech for our expt this autumn, but changing varieties is tedious! Previous expts just used one variety in a rotation expt, what we're doing is different. Cheers Andy

Hi Folks, earlier this yr i mentioned we plan to start some DD expts at Rothamsted (i was asking about suitable wheat varieties). We plan to buy a plot drill and i'm interested to learn about types of direct drill. I know of disc and tine drills - do they all fall into one of these two...

Interesting. 11.2% Protein is about 2% N. So in a 12t/ha crop, assume 15% moisture (bit high this yr?), 10.2t/ha at 0% MC. Makes about 200kg N/ha, plus a bit in the straw. So the bits getting 68kgN/ha were finding 130kg (+straw N) from elsewhere - aerial deposition, soil mineral N.

@Simon C yes thanks, should be going into fifth year of DD.

@yellow belly interesting comments, thanks. Yes, whole farm N balance is important, but a crop that takes up a higher %of available N is surely on the right road to improving N use efficiency? Interesting idea to see if a second wheat benefits from a late N application in the first wheat. We had...