Autumn Wheat drilling

ace

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
east anglia
Personally i dont see the problem. I am being gently persuaded against my better judgement and that of my agronomist to start drilling in early September.
The agronomist said he would like to manage combinable crops and not blackgrass, i agree with him.It has been our strategy for several years.
 
I do read with interested all your replies to this subject. Surely everybodies farms are different. The farm i work on in sussex which is mainly heavy weald clay we have to drill middle of September. If the weather breaks by the middle of October we are wasting our time otherwise so all these experts who say hold off drilling until middle of october well you come here and have a go this is not boys ground this is mans ground.
 

Lincsman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Personally i dont see the problem. I am being gently persuaded against my better judgement and that of my agronomist to start drilling in early September.
The agronomist said he would like to manage combinable crops and not blackgrass, i agree with him.It has been our strategy for several years.

I am interested to know how that works?... as most farmers will be... so he thinks you have some magic ability to "supply" him with early sown crops clean of blackgrass... has he been doing this job long?
 

Lincsman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I do read with interested all your replies to this subject. Surely everybodies farms are different. The farm i work on in sussex which is mainly heavy weald clay we have to drill middle of September. If the weather breaks by the middle of October we are wasting our time otherwise so all these experts who say hold off drilling until middle of october well you come here and have a go this is not boys ground this is mans ground.

The trick is to cultivate for drilling late, which generally means well dried out and rough, then a drill which goes straight into it.
 

jd6420s

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Yorkshire
We have a few heavy clay fields and we have to get them in in September. Even if we have perfect conditions in October it still struggles to grow. The lighter fields we can drill in October but September drilled always yields best.
Anyone advising me to delay drilling because of blackgrass will get pretty short shrift. It might work elsewhere but not here. You never know what the weather will be like in the following week and if I can get on the land then I do so. The seed doesn't grow in the bag.
 

Lincsman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
We have a few heavy clay fields and we have to get them in in September. Even if we have perfect conditions in October it still struggles to grow. The lighter fields we can drill in October but September drilled always yields best.
Anyone advising me to delay drilling because of blackgrass will get pretty short shrift. It might work elsewhere but not here. You never know what the weather will be like in the following week and if I can get on the land then I do so. The seed doesn't grow in the bag.
Your Blackgrass isnt that bad then, years ago sept drilled around here was down to 1t/ac or preferably sprayed off in march, it was all fine until atlantis stopped working.
 

Farma Parma

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Northumberlandia
Ploughs are for blocking gateways.
dont like to point the obvious but maybes the plough might have helped in ways you just cant see.
the Plough is always seen as the bad machine these days, up here is cert has its place & will continue to do so.
Ive got some very well est crops here both with ploughing & heavy stubble cultivation
nothing is DD ive not even considered that route yet.
No BG whatsoever. Deffo need extra agchems on the non ploughed stuff mind.
 

jd6420s

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Yorkshire
Your Blackgrass isnt that bad then, years ago sept drilled around here was down to 1t/ac or preferably sprayed off in march, it was all fine until atlantis stopped working.
[/Q
Your Blackgrass isnt that bad then, years ago sept drilled around here was down to 1t/ac or preferably sprayed off in march, it was all fine until atlantis stopped working.
No it's not, I'm at the stage where I go round with the knapsack sprayer with glyphosate and spray it in May. The nextdoor neighbour's fields are terrible. He was delaying drilling last year and never got any wheat in. It was either spring barley or fallow. He hasn't exactly got a full barn this year but in the long run it might have been for the best. The blackgrass keeps spreading from his fields to mine so it was nice to have a break from it this year.
 

ace

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
east anglia
I am interested to know how that works?... as most farmers will be... so he thinks you have some magic ability to "supply" him with early sown crops clean of blackgrass... has he been doing this job long?
No , the agronomist is on my side. He wants fields drilled later so that we can manage combinable crops and not crops full of blackgrass
 

ace

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
east anglia
dont like to point the obvious but maybes the plough might have helped in ways you just cant see.
the Plough is always seen as the bad machine these days, up here is cert has its place & will continue to do so.
Ive got some very well est crops here both with ploughing & heavy stubble cultivation
nothing is DD ive not even considered that route yet.
No BG whatsoever. Deffo need extra agchems on the non ploughed stuff mind.
We ploughed 20years ago and it was too slow, never further away from a seedbed and did not solve any blackgrass problems.We have tried the odd field since and it is not the answer.
 

Lincsman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I know that but on our ground you cant cultivate it and leave until mid October because if it turns wet you will not get on it again. It would be nice to have that just works by looking at it but it doesn't.

The Clay I have is made into clay roof tiles to give you an idea, some fallow land was ploughed in august for contracted vining peas, it was wet and looked real mess, these 16" furrow lumps were up to 1m long and then set like concrete, but it has weathered well (it has to dry out to weather) all autumn I have been wishing it was for wheat, a combi drill would have made a fantastic job. The rest of the farm that was ploughed in 2019 and left fallow for 2020 has gone in really well but where spring crops were planted is now fallow.
 

DanniAgro

Member
The Clay I have is made into clay roof tiles to give you an idea, some fallow land was ploughed in august for contracted vining peas, it was wet and looked real mess, these 16" furrow lumps were up to 1m long and then set like concrete, but it has weathered well (it has to dry out to weather) all autumn I have been wishing it was for wheat, a combi drill would have made a fantastic job. The rest of the farm that was ploughed in 2019 and left fallow for 2020 has gone in really well but where spring crops were planted is now fallow.
Wow, that sounds like my farm thirty years ago, when it had much less humous and ploughing turned up horseheads. Over the last decades growing maize with applications of muck, compost from my neighbour and horse muck from nearby, have made a huge difference to the structure and tilth.
My clay, which sounds very similar to yours, with old clay pits nearby, now ploughs up in a good tilth, and with a furrow press and another on the front of the harrow/drilling tractor, breaks down brilliantly. That's at least true up until this year, when I've had to draw on the tilth built up in past years in planting in a wet seedbed, so in some areas next autumn it's probably back to horseheads, until the clods are broken down in succesive seasons.
 

flintgrinder

New Member
dont like to point the obvious but maybes the plough might have helped in ways you just cant see.
the Plough is always seen as the bad machine these days, up here is cert has its place & will continue to do so.
Ive got some very well est crops here both with ploughing & heavy stubble cultivation
nothing is DD ive not even considered that route yet.
No BG whatsoever. Deffo need extra agchems on the non ploughed stuff mind.
We plough most of our cereal land, we sometimes min till but it is always done for a reason related to crop performance or weed control. We always seem to get a reduced yield of Oats after the Sumo type Heva we have or indeed others when I have tried them, this does not surprise me Oats dislike any form of compaction which you inevitably get if you don't move all the soil. Also min till can be a nightmare where you are trying to grow seed crops, with volunteers difficult to control in the autumn.
Where we do use min till is for OSR which seems to be well suited to our one pass with the Heva and then the combi drill.

I have a neighbor who has started direct drilling, this harvest his winter barley yielded 3.46t/ha less than ours drilled at the same time.

I have no problem with min till being proposed as an alternative on high input land, but we have experimented quite a few times with various cultivators versus the plough here and fuel consumption is virtually the same, but this is low fuel usage ploughing land, wearing parts are similar cost overall. What concerns me are young lads who see the idea of government support for min till as a reason to go out and spend a lot of money on min/no till kit that they then have to find more expensive land to justify. We have an example of this near here another lad bought a 300 hp+ tractor and an expensive drill to work some moderate FBT land, couldn't pull it had to get a contractor in with an even bigger unit, now he has a wet soggy lumpy and compacted mess!
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,294
  • 1
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/
Top