Black grass 2021

[Brisel]

Lower yields won't make up the saving with zero till.

This is why DD/no till is not more popular. I can't name any no tiller who hasn't had some shockingly poor crops occasionally on the road to Nirvana.

I've had a few shockers with plenty of steel deployed too, some of it appropriate at the time, some taking a risk that has not paid off.

 

[JCfarmer]

This is why DD/no till is not more popular. I can't name any no tiller who hasn't had some shockingly poor crops occasionally on the road to Nirvana.

I've had a few shockers with plenty of steel deployed too, some of it appropriate at the time, some taking a risk that has not paid off.

It did make sense then, I've just edited the original.

 

[snarling bee]

What ever their type of farming, not many farmers want to share their disasters unless everybody else is having them.

 

[Badshot]

I'll put my hand up and said I've had more shockers with plough/min till, than I have with direct drill, and now zero till.
Perhaps I've been lucky.

 

[ajd132]

Problem is when someone has a shocker in no till they blame their system, when 99% of the time it is their management that is at fault. Once you realise that and start learning that it’s a different agronomic system then it gets much better.

 

[Jackall]

Depending on the % of your combinable acreage is.If it is low I would try and not put it through the combine. Black grass is a pain. Forage if you can and get some cost back or destroy if not. First loss is least loss IMO black grass going through a combine chaff spreaders scatter the seed from a small strip/ area over the whole header cut It will just multiply each year if kept in an arable rotation

 

[yellow belly]

My lowest in both cultivated and notill is nocrop harvested
the thing with notill it costs a lot less
and when you get a normal full crop it still costs less
9 years no till and the saving are 9 times
we are now lower black grass levels than any time in the last 30 years whe ipu resistance started to appear

 

[Two Tone]

Lower yields will more than counter act the saving with zero till.

Well, we will have to wait and see. I’m not religious about it yet, because I won’t truly know until harvest and I have both conventional and Zero-till on the farm at the moment to compare. I’ll also report all the good as well as the bad.

All I’ll say at the moment is that I’m very impressed with 95% of the Zero-till crops.
I think my best looking bit of wheat is Zero-tilled. I have one field of Winter Barley that looked bloody awful all Winter and was in two mind as to whether I replaced it. Decided to see what would happen and it now looks fantastic!
Another field of it looks to me that it will be the highest yield we shall have.

I’ve one area of wheat on our heaviest land that had storm Alex on it 5 days after drilling and 2 days after its full Pre-em that suffered badly all Winter. Patched a bit of Spring into the worst bits and now wish I hadn’t.
Somebody told me not to look at it till the following May and they were right.

I’ll stress that this is here and the same might not happen elsewhere.

I’ll also state that I will be doing a small bit of ploughing this Autumn on that heaviest land that IMO isn’t quite ready to Zero-till yet and was buggered up by bad management on my behalf starting 2 years ago, especially on the BG front. Once I have rectified its problem, I’m fairly sure it will Zero-till the following year.

If you are going to make it work, you have got to want to make it work first, or it won’t.

 

[Neddy flanders]

I'll put my hand up and said I've had more shockers with plough/min till, than I have with direct drill, and now zero till.
Perhaps I've been lucky.

I have shockers all the time. any seeding in previous crop results in horrendous populations in following wheat. next few weeks are going to be depressing to say the least around here. Last springs crops of Spring beans looked ok, but by harvest had shed a lot of BG.
didnt delay drilling to BG optimum of post Oct 25th, but went early oct. yes a mistake, but has led to healthier crops. wouldnt have drilled any later.

Avadex + 650g FFCT + PDM + DFF seemingly not enough. Properly out of ideas and willpower now.

 

[Renaultman]

If the rest of the farm is BG free I would spray off the whole field without hesitation. If you don't you will regret it.
If you can't do that, combine it last, and budget for 2 or 3 late drilled spring barleys with 2" min till on that field. Don't plough it down, keep t

I would say that being committed to zero till saves £100-£200/ha on operating over heads depending on the farm compared to gearing up for a no till/plough system. Not massive when wheat is £200/t but when I goes back down to £130 that can make a big difference. Cannot lose yield though. What it does do is mitigate risk/capital exposure against actors out of our control, like last years weather when everything around here was rubbish regardless of system.
On BG no till definitely helps but isn’t a silver bullet. It has allowed us to start drilling earlier again (we still have some BG in crops but not a great deal) which is going to be worth several hundreds of thousands this year. If I had min tilled and drilled early this year we would have terrible BG levels I’m sure, in fact I have a 6ha of early drilled min till and I had to use a Claydon hoe through it 3 times to try and get the levels down.
although saying all this there is an annoyingly bad patch of BG right outside my house!

Always the case.
Black grass isn't my problem resistant ryegrass is, saying that I got a patch last year. Roundupped immediately then watched like a hawk, in to spring beans this year. Next step tackle the resistant ryegrass, not yet a huge problem and I will be roundupping some bits of growing crop where it has become one.

 

[Adeptandy]

I’d think very carefully before Roundup-ing off pushing £10k’s worth of crop off out of 300 acres.

I did this, 2 years later it was just as bad, I wouldn't advocate spraying it off if there's a potential good crop.

 

[ajd132]

Always the case.
Black grass isn't my problem resistant ryegrass is, saying that I got a patch last year. Roundupped immediately then watched like a hawk, in to spring beans this year. Next step tackle the resistant ryegrass, not yet a huge problem and I will be roundupping some bits of growing crop where it has become one.

We always found spring beans to actually be the worst crop for blackgrass

 

[Barleymow]

Yes..


But delayed drilling, with a good Pre em along with ploughing is 90% of it.

After the last 2 wet autumns I think a lot will forget about delaying drilling

 

[ajd132]

After the last 2 wet autumns I think a lot will forget about delaying drilling

I think you have to do Atleast a proportion earlier, no till does allow earlier drilling as your aren’t disturbing the surface as much but it’s not a silver bullet and won’t save the day.
one of the main reasons we have given up cultivating is because it makes blackgrass control so difficult and can cause more problems that it solves.
interestingly our later drilled no till stuff is quite good this year, it’s better than local mauled in stuff with tine drills and my own broadcast stuff.
Last year it was a disaster no tilling late. The difference this year was that I had a catch crop to drill into on a lot of it and the main thing i reckon is I dropped the pendimethlin out!

 

[Renaultman]

We always found spring beans to actually be the worst crop for blackgrass

Just going to dedicate any that we find

 

[teslacoils]

We always found spring beans to actually be the worst crop for blackgrass

Just the worst crop in so many ways.

 

[ajd132]

Just the worst crop in so many ways.

To be fair we used to go some mega yields from them. But would then have to plough because there was so much grass in the bottom.

 

[Renaultman]

Just the worst crop in so many ways.

By no means my favourite, either, little return, little weed control, pressure to get the next crop in, but my following wheat looks fantastic. Much preferred Wheat oats wheat, OSR but wild oats and everyone growing oats and collapsing the market put paid to that

 

[Two Tone]

We always found spring beans to actually be the worst crop for blackgrass

Just the worst crop in so many ways.

Yes, Spring Beans can be a bad crop for encouraging Blackgrass. We have lost so many of the pre-em sprays we were able to use. But even they didn’t work if it was very dry after it was put on.

If it turns wet later, this more open crop lets BG get a hold, despite the fact that it is a Spring crop.
BG will germinate 365 days a year if it is wet enough.

After the last 2 wet autumns I think a lot will forget about delaying drilling

IMO Blackgrass just adapts itself to any conditions, even later drilling.
Trying to get the balance right as to drilling later to reduce it, whilst having a crop good enough that can out-compete it is a dilemma.

I think you have to do Atleast a proportion earlier, no till does allow earlier drilling as your aren’t disturbing the surface as much but it’s not a silver bullet and won’t save the day.
one of the main reasons we have given up cultivating is because it makes blackgrass control so difficult and can cause more problems that it solves.
interestingly our later drilled no till stuff is quite good this year, it’s better than local mauled in stuff with tine drills and my own broadcast stuff.
Last year it was a disaster no tilling late. The difference this year was that I had a catch crop to drill into on a lot of it and the main thing i reckon is I dropped the pendimethlin out!

The theory of being able to drill earlier if we No-till is a huge encouragement to me to want to move towards this system.
However, I have experienced a problem on 3 of my very heaviest fields this year that I No-till drilled 5 days and then put its full pre-em spray plus Avadex on before Storm Alex, that first weekend in October 2020. The sprays found their way into the seed slot and severely stunted it.
But I’m amazed how well 90% of it recovered in the Spring. And there is no BG in any of it.

The 10% I patched on with Spring wheat has not germinated well because of the drought. These fields followed Spring Oats, put in after a CSFB failed Rape crop. After it eventually rained on those Spring Oats, we got a flush of Fat Hen.
After the recent rains this year, the seed from that Fat Hen is now causing huge problems in the at-last germinating Spring wheat!
It looks like it is coming up in the rows that the Spring Wheat was planted in.
The only Herbicide we can find that will hopefully kill it without damaging the surviving Winter wheat is Zypar.

At least there isn’t any Blackgrass on these fields, but I will need to press the “Reset Button” on these fields and plough them this Autumn ahead of planting Hybrid Winter Barley, if nothing else to bury the Fan Hen seeds.


I’m pleased to say though that all my No-tilled crops of my less heavy, medium and lighter land fields is looking great!
Infinitely better that those around us that conventionally drilled later and look an even worse “Patchwork” of crop and bald patches, than those very heavy 3 fields of mine.

 

[Lincsman]

After the last 2 wet autumns I think a lot will forget about delaying drilling

Then they will remember why they were supposed to late drill... nothing has changed.