2019 all over again?

[thorpe]

How do we manage with undersown crops?
A good sharp knife.

 

[DrWazzock]

Ha ha. In days before roundup I can just remember a plain section knife being needed to cut the twitch. You could hear the knife banging away haif a mile away.

 

[Hindsight]

Well it’s been a wake up call. I’ve no intention of messing about with SFI. A lot of it here on slopes will go into permanent pasture and livestock. Maybe contrary to current fashion but the safest way forward in my view. I never want to see what the rain has done to our soils this past week ever again.

Why not herbal ley DrW. Will draw £380 hectare and will revert to permanent Pasture.

 

[DrWazzock]

Why not herbal ley DrW. Will draw £380 hectare and will revert to permanent Pasture.

Yes, nothing is off the table. Will a herbal ley fatten stock as efficiently as a good blend of ryegrasses and white clover and be as long lived? To be honest I don’t know. But let’s say we run 3 ewes (with lambs) to the acre (5 is recommended). So we’ve 6 lambs per acre. Ideally we want those lambs fattened on grass by end of summer. If the herbal ley will only fatten 4 lambs per acre instead of 6 then financially its benefit is marginal when compared to a good permanent pasture ley. The herbal ley mixes I’ve looked at only seem to have one type of ryegrass included so as not to smoother out the “herbs”. This might be good for the herbs but for fattening I’m not so sure. Anyway we will look into it.

 

[DrWazzock]

What else have I learned?
If you are drilling autumn cereals then drill earlier rather than later. Not stupidly early but after first week of September. My old rule of “get it all drilled by 4th October” needs painting on the shed wall in letters 10 feet high. We don’t really have a blackgrass problem.
But perennially difficult sloping ground will be grassed down.
We tend to plough now. As to direct drilling, cover crops etc then we’d probably have no cereals drilled at all now and be looking at spring drilling. We’d then almost guarantee a ton per acre yield penalty and we could never go early enough for spring wheat. But there would be tge SFI payments for cover crops to help make up the shortfall. It’s a bit of a cop out though in my view.

 

[Devil's advocate]

Yes, nothing is off the table. Will a herbal ley fatten stock as efficiently as a good blend of ryegrasses and white clover and be as long lived? To be honest I don’t know. But let’s say we run 3 ewes (with lambs) to the acre (5 is recommended). So we’ve 6 lambs per acre. Ideally we want those lambs fattened on grass by end of summer. If the herbal ley will only fatten 4 lambs per acre instead of 6 then financially its benefit is marginal when compared to a good permanent pasture ley. The herbal ley mixes I’ve looked at only seem to have one type of ryegrass included so as not to smoother out the “herbs”. This might be good for the herbs but for fattening I’m not so sure. Anyway we will look into it.

Should be better for sheep grazing & will revert to white clover, grass over time. personally if ploughable it wants ripping up after 5 years wheat, barley reseed again.

 

[DrWazzock]

Should be better for sheep grazing & will revert to white clover, grass over time. personally if ploughable it wants ripping up after 5 years wheat, barley reseed again.

We do normally plough up grass leys after 5 years and rotate them. We will carry on doing that but leave some of the really sticky steeper stuff down more permanently. As we know rotating grass breaks up the sheep parasite cycle.
We’ve been unlucky with the rain this year but drilling earlier would have helped.

 

[APJ]

A new neighbour managed to get a bit drilled after maize . The tried and tested plough followed by a combi

Looks like the beach to me, do they want some water I can send some

 

[DRC]

Looks like the beach to me, do they want some water I can send some

It was just one dry field and the farm in question still have 70 acres of maize to do that has water lying under it.

 

[Bossfarmer]

Ours is a mess despite or because of hard work. The more I think about it the more I’m inclined to grass down anything with a slope. It’s crap grade three and really I’m done messing about with arable on it. I’ll leave 70 acres out of 200 on the flat, lightish land as arable. It’ll direct drill with minimum effort and risk. I’m in risk aversion mode now.

fields with a slope here have avoided any standing water so higher chance of crop survival surely

 

[DrWazzock]

It was just one dry field and the farm in question still have 70 acres of maize to do that has water lying under it.

That seedbed looks too fine to stand much rain if I’m honest. The traditional way with autumn seedbeds was to leave them rough here to take the rain. That’s before the chemical men wanted them fine for preems.
But really no matter what we do we can sometimes just be “unlucky” and I think we’ve had a fair dose of bad luck this year.

 

[DrWazzock]

fields with a slope here have avoided any standing water so higher chance of crop survival surely

No standing water but the clay plastered flat by the rain and the seed suffocated/drowned before emergence. If it had already emerged it wouldn’t have been so badly affected hence my advice to myself to drill a bit earlier and not just before a large rain event next time. Trying to learn lessons without junking the entire autumn drilling sysyem.

 

[Wombat]

fields with a slope here have avoided any standing water so higher chance of crop survival surely

What are these slopes you refer to?

 

[E_B]

Yes, nothing is off the table. Will a herbal ley fatten stock as efficiently as a good blend of ryegrasses and white clover and be as long lived? To be honest I don’t know. But let’s say we run 3 ewes (with lambs) to the acre (5 is recommended). So we’ve 6 lambs per acre. Ideally we want those lambs fattened on grass by end of summer. If the herbal ley will only fatten 4 lambs per acre instead of 6 then financially its benefit is marginal when compared to a good permanent pasture ley. The herbal ley mixes I’ve looked at only seem to have one type of ryegrass included so as not to smoother out the “herbs”. This might be good for the herbs but for fattening I’m not so sure. Anyway we will look into it.

If I were you, I would seriously look into GS3 on CS. Entire farm down to IRG. Half of it into GS3, 100 acres nets £19k, you can silage it until end of June and reseeds itself. The other 100 acres graze with sheep. Rotate the two halves of the farm each year, or every other year. You might want a tractor and a topper. No insecticide on entire farm gets you another £3.5k.

GS3 is the only way to make these new s**t schemes work for livestock farmers, IMO.

 

[E_B]

The last few days have made this worse than 2019. At least in 2019 we left some until Spring and spared making a mess. Our heavy clay in North Suffolk a write off after Friday, it was already wet at drilling time, went in poorly and needed a kind week afterwards, except for beans after grass. Gut feeling was to leave it but pushed on. Now needs some restorative work to put it right and oats put in for Spring. Soil has run down tramlines and left significant ruts. IRG leys in arable rotation have come to nothing, despite sowing twice, seed isnt cheap. Slugs presumeably.

 

[APJ]

What else have I learned?
If you are drilling autumn cereals then drill earlier rather than later. Not stupidly early but after first week of September. My old rule of “get it all drilled by 4th October” needs painting on the shed wall in letters 10 feet high. We don’t really have a blackgrass problem.
But perennially difficult sloping ground will be grassed down.
We tend to plough now. As to direct drilling, cover crops etc then we’d probably have no cereals drilled at all now and be looking at spring drilling. We’d then almost guarantee a ton per acre yield penalty and we could never go early enough for spring wheat. But there would be tge SFI payments for cover crops to help make up the shortfall. It’s a bit of a cop out though in my view.

I’ve told my agronomist exactly this starting on the 15th/sept and finishing by October, anything grassy will be spring sown.

 

[APJ]

It was just one dry field and the farm in question still have 70 acres of maize to do that has water lying under it.

Must be nice David to be watching over the hedge this season, a wise time to retire. It’s certainly testing.

 

[EddieB]

Drilling beans today, it’s ploughed up surprisingly dry.

 

[Hindsight]

If I were you, I would seriously look into GS3 on CS. Entire farm down to IRG. Half of it into GS3, 100 acres nets £19k, you can silage it until end of June and reseeds itself. The other 100 acres graze with sheep. Rotate the two halves of the farm each year, or every other year. You might want a tractor and a topper. No insecticide on entire farm gets you another £3.5k.

GS3 is the only way to make these new s**t schemes work for livestock farmers, IMO.

Hi, technical question. Will you get no insecticide on temporary grass?

 

[E_B]

Hi, technical question. Will you get no insecticide on temporary grass?

Well I assumed so purely because it's a 'temporary' crop on arable land, but perhaps not, I cannot be sure of that.