The Claydon Terrablade

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
The edit said rubbish I said bllx.
If you re read the post I pointed out you were totally missing the point in comparing an old rotation to a modern one as they are chalk and cheese.
There is no way you can call any modern cereal competitive in relation to weeds but the old ones are.
View attachment 809074

Here is a competitive crop of wheat on really poor triple resistant BG land, unsprayed and only 30N. If this was Skyfall or any other modern it would be BG heads only. This is completely unprofitable as a commodity so no use to most farmers today.
You neglected to take in board the fact that an awfull lot of hand labour was done and what would happen to all the extra grass needed to rotate.
Glib sound bites about soil health and sound rotations may sound good but the devil as always is in the detail which you fail to address.

I stand by my post - rotation and diversity

There is nothing new about grassweeds or blackgrass and resistance was created by farmers not nature
 
Last edited:

Beefsmith

Member
I have heard suggestions that soil health is responsible for worsening black-grass, but have not seen any good evidence. I don't think soil health is that important. Rather I think it's rotation, perhaps non-inversion deep tillage and drilling dates.

It’s not soil health but drainage is a cause. Poorly drained fields or fields with old drainage systems definitely have worse grass weed issues because they like moisture. We have soils with P and K indices of 4. Good pH. Good organic matter levels in wide rotations and they have BG when we put wheat in them once every 5-6 years. We see very little BG in spring barley, short term ley, maize and potatoes.
 

tw15

Member
Location
DORSET
I personally think those simba solo type machines that people were all using mixing the top 8 -10 inches of soil haven't helped with blackgrass . I know they say after a few years the seed dies well if the seed is mixed in ten inches of topsoil any thing that you do for the next few years is going to show deep buried seed the light .
The only way in my book is get the seeds to germinate and kill them .
For most with serious blackgrass it might mean not cropping a field for a couple of years . Sometimes it would be better to admit defeat and look at the longer picture. How flushes could you get over 2 years lots !
 

clbarclay

Member
Location
Worcestershire
If you are goign to fallowing a field for two years though, why do you need to stimulate flushes? As long as no new viable weed seed is being added then does it matter if the existing weed seeds are germinated and plants killed or left to loose viability.
 

rob1

Member
Location
wiltshire
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction unintended consequence.

And in the case of inter-row hoeing it's an environmentally damaging 'unintended consequence', not to mention a time bomb for when the press and public get wind of it.
doesnt seem to be raised as an issue in organic farming dont they do a fair bit of spring harrowing?
 

tw15

Member
Location
DORSET
If you are goign to fallowing a field for two years though, why do you need to stimulate flushes? As long as no new viable weed seed is being added then does it matter if the existing weed seeds are germinated and plants killed or left to loose viability.


Once they are germinated and killed you are 100% sure they gone just waiting and hoping is a mugs game . Same as trying to smother them with cover crops etc .
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
If you are goign to fallowing a field for two years though, why do you need to stimulate flushes? As long as no new viable weed seed is being added then does it matter if the existing weed seeds are germinated and plants killed or left to loose viability.

I don’t have a fixed one as such but it has a basic principle of no second cereals and 40% spring break cropping established into over winter yet covers

We grow up to 9 different combinable crops plus the multi species cover crops ........ diversity
 

DieselRob

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
North Yorkshire
I don’t have a fixed one as such but it has a basic principle of no second cereals and 40% spring break cropping established into over winter yet covers

We grow up to 9 different combinable crops plus the multi species cover crops ........ diversity
What area (%) of your various crops do you grow now? And what were you before?
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
What area (%) of your various crops do you grow now? And what were you before?

the % is not fixed, other than the 50% first wheat and 10% OSR - the rest is whatever spring break best suits that year / markets / weather / block of land etc

pre my conservation ag approach I grew wheat. rape and small area of beans maybe a bit of barley occasionally. usualy all autumn established
 

rob1

Member
Location
wiltshire
I don’t have a fixed one as such but it has a basic principle of no second cereals and 40% spring break cropping established into over winter yet covers

We grow up to 9 different combinable crops plus the multi species cover crops ........ diversity
Over winter cover crops are fine on dry ground but on heavy soils in wet parts of the country they dont work unless you can destroy them early and allow them to die back to let the soil warm and dry on top, we have used sheep to graze them down but they can do a lot of damage in wet spells
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Over winter cover crops are fine on dry ground but on heavy soils in wet parts of the country they dont work unless you can destroy them early and allow them to die back to let the soil warm and dry on top, we have used sheep to graze them down but they can do a lot of damage in wet spells

don't have sheep then

plenty of people quite successfully using conservation ag on VERY heavy soil. Its certainly not a one size fits all approach or solution however that much is true, some use cover crops and some don't. It's what works on you farm that matters
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
The only evidence I need is my experience on my farm

15 years ago I had a grassweed problem and it was getting worse, today I don’t have an issue at all

It’s cost me significantly in lost gross output growing such a high % of lower gross margin spring crops but that loss is affordable when you can also halve your fixed cost structure as a result


When you see such a change it rather irrelevant what any peer reviewed paper might say.

Zero doubt whatsoever here, if you want rid of grassweeds then get the diversity right !
Do you lower you’re contracting charge on CFA’s for reduced output? I thought you said you were unashamedly expensive, if so that doesn’t make much sense.
 

MJB

Member
Location
Suffolk
Copy of an extract from the "Practical Hints from the Notebook of an Old Farmer" written in 1914 by William Dannant from Great Waltham in Essex.


They've been battling black grass for over a century!




upload_2019-6-17_13-4-0.png

upload_2019-6-17_13-4-27.png
 

Fat hen

Member
I have a 6m 19 coulter Hybrid, so that's 31.58 cm or 12.43" rows. With 7" A shares the banding is about 5" most of the time which leaves 7.4" to hoe in with no margin for error. With 3" spoons for beans or osr you'd have 16" to play with.

Hoeing is worth about 40 kg/ha of N due to soil N mineralised from the cultivations.

Here's Feldspar's photo as linked above. It just shows where the weed control needs to be!

View attachment 537310
Claydons dont half distrurb a lot of soil. Totally reliant in a good pre-em as I know from bitter experience when our sprayman spread his services too thin in 2017. We're still paying for it with BG seeds. Surely the hoe cant be effective in the "band". Take your point on N.
 

Spud

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
YO62
It seems bonkers to me. Minimise disturbance when drilling then cultivate between the rows and chit more weeds.
Far better to direct drill into a mulch of dessicated cover crop with little disturbance ime. The cc provides enough cover to hold the weeds back til the crop gets competitive.
 

alomy75

Member
We used to run a Garford inter-row guided hoe after drilling with a Dale. Conditions were incredibly important. Too dry and the hoe blades wouldn’t penetrate. Too wet and the tractor made a mess and any dislodged blackgrass would re-root and carry on growing. In ideal conditions it did kill blackgrass; but as has been said, more is disturbed and grows. Less ears per plant admittedly but still plants that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. With the guidance on the hoe we could get over it with a little tractor on tiny tyres at about 8k but you can’t go too small else the hoe steers the tractor when it moves side to side. With these issues and the fact that it was a steady old job for someone all spring meant we didn’t replace it after the farm split up. Back to narrow coulters and increased crop competition and no worse off for blackgrass control; however having said that, we still cultivate so i’m embarking on DD as and when conditions allow with a second drill. While we are (just about) still growing beet I can’t get away from cultivations.
 
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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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