The history of "Blackgrass" and its control before sprays?

2004 - bought first bit of land and remember discussion with vendor about what they used for "blackgrass". Apparently, they used *everything*.
2007 - got my PA2 and wheat pre-em was 4lt of Crystal which was considered "pushing it" but now probably considered either a good mixer for the main program, or what you mix with Atlantis for the follow-up spray.
2008 - Used "Hawk" nozzles and had to ask what Hawk was.
2017 - My post-em spray for wheat after beans is going to be 20g Lexus + 2lt Stomp, which is exactly what my father was using to achieve good control of BG back when I was at uni.

Blackgrass has been my main thought for my entire farming life of 13 years. How very, very sad is that?

Straight out of college 1994, reasonable dose of ipu.
Followed possibly by cheetah s in spring.
Left clean fields. Missed a run with the ipu once, was like a lawn.
Only ever known chemical control.
Interested to hear of others who can remember further back.

2006

Arable without grass isn't that old

So I don't think major bg problems are either!

1998 - started work on a farm with some heavy ground and BG, the farm was ploughed and had a decent 6 yr rotation..
I’d only encountered Brome and wild oats before on light land farms previously.
IPU, Hawk et al...

2001 ish - Atlantis !!! We were all very excited,and 100% min till and WW/WW/OSR, mid Sept drilling at low seed rates, how progressive are we ????

2005 ish - Crystal / Liberator added to the roster.

2006 - BG worse than ever, getting worse on the light land, Atlantis declining...

2011 - I start managing the farm, start later drilling higher rates, bit of spring cropping returns, less OSR, return of Avadex

2015 - making good progress before leaving to take up a new position on a farm with wall to wall BG, off we go again.....shallow cults, later drilling, 1/3 rd spring cropping, drop 2nd wheats, wb, s beans start stacking pre ems.

Making progress, but despite the cultural controls an increased herbicide spend.

As an aside, apart from a patch of cranesbill or two, I have no other weeds that cause me any degree of worry or problem. This will be the first year of arable on one bad field after a 3 year ley, and it has gone into OSR so we will see what difference it has made. Once you get to wheat one year in 5 or 6, I dont think it is anything like the problem it is with two wheats in a row.

Sometime in the early 80s (while I was still at school) I remember Dad saying one of the fields had blackgrass & we needed to spray it with Hytane (IPU to you youngsters !)
That was the thin end of the wedge

Id never seen any till last year when i found 3 plants, though id not been too involved with the arable up untill 4 years ago when i started college. Showed grandad it and he had seen it before but didnt know what it was, has never been a problem at all here *yet*. Aim now is to tackle it before it starts in hope we dont get anymore...

Never seen it, did not consider it a problem until I started lurking about on TFF.

Couch grass was always the problem here, largely gone now due to the use of Roundup. Back in the 70's, 80's and some of the 90's, it was a real problem, with many ideas to kill it off coming to nothing. Roundup cured it though.

Just a thought really but in 30 odd years of working on farms i think blackgrass has become more of a problem the more farms moved away from a proper rotation such as wheat /rape /wheat /rape and also where farms years ago were more mixed so there was grass and livestock blackgrass didn't become established .I think even short term lays in the rotation in them days would have kept a lid on it .Just my 2p.And years ago everything was ploughed and intensively worked but drilled later in October so chemicals worked better because of moisture. Also we did also to get more frost and harder winters which might have helped.

It was a problem on the Cotswolds as far back as the mid 80s, (probably sooner but stubble burning sorted it) but 5l/ha Hytane killed it easily. Then Rhone Poulenc brought out 'Javelin' with a reduced dose of IPU assuming the DFF would do the rest. In our trials it didn't which led to javelin Gold with the full IPU dose, but we realised then that IPU was dose sensitive so on the decline.

Also because more farms had stock they baled their own straw so there was less contractors going around spreading the stuff

Fromebridge said:

It was a problem on the Cotswolds as far back as the mid 80s, (probably sooner but stubble burning sorted it) but 5l/ha Hytane killed it easily. Then Rhone Poulenc brought out 'Javelin' with a reduced dose of IPU assuming the DFF would do the rest. In our trials it didn't which led to javelin Gold with the full IPU dose, but we realised then that IPU was dose sensitive so on the decline.

Click to expand...

I remember Javelin gold

Oh my god ,,,,,, I didn't realise that at the age of 55 I was a fossil !!!!!!

My early days working at home I was more interested in tractors and chasing girls so didn't take much notice what was tipped in the sprayer ,,, but certainly BG was not the big issue in those years , couch grass and water grass ( whatever that was ) were the main enemies ,,,, dreaded ploughing wet headlands were the plough just bunged solid with water grass , Round up was fairly new then and I have always remembered it was £20 / acre but within a couple of years headland ploughing became a doddle .
1980 saw me of to college and upon leaving went and worked on a largish farm ,,,, first day at work and the manager asked me if I minded straw burning ,,,, love it was my reply ,,,, excellent he said as I have a phobia about fire ,,,,, Farm had a brand new 8080 that year with straw spreaders on the back , dropped them off and the local pig farmer baled 4 times around the field , spreaders back on for the rest of the field ,cultivated the headland and then at the end of the afternoon of I went with the managers new Hilux , a length of wire and a couple of tyres ,,,, manager used to go and hide in the office and let me get on with it , back burnt and then let the rest go ,,,, maybe up to 100 acres !!!!!. Left lovely clean stubbles but what was noticeable was that grass weeds were always very evident on the headlands on following crops .
At that point my brain goes into a blur ( girls and alcohol) but I do remember late 80's ,,,,, back home now ,,,, we had taken on a block of land doing cultivations and harvesting but a spraying contractor was employed for that task ,,,,, he had taken delivery of a very cheap batch of IPU which bunged the nozzles up relentlessly ,,,,, last field was sprayed in the dark it seems with probably 15 nozzles blocked across the 24 m boom , for years you could see strips of BG in that field . From there on its a memory of opening the farmers weekly and seeing that if anything was cheap and usefull in the fight against BG then it was banned

We were ploghing most everything up to 82 then changed to some min till blackgrass then became a problem if you got a poor burn hence the fitting of straw spreaders even hytane/dicurane struggled to control it if the weather was dry and it did not get washed in.w e also gave up spring barley for Igri and Sonia W barley which looking back did not help with grass control Today a third of the farm is in spring crops

two things seem to stand out from the above posts apart from decline in chemical response --ploughing and rotation

I have ploughed some new land this year .....crop not even germinated....black grasss at 2 leaves