Blackgrass chemical attack

[ollie989898]

Yes.

Simply knowing that you have a break crop that isn't going to be chock full of the stuff is ace. That's the benefit. Knowing next year that I've a field that's worse than I'd like for bg will be grass for three years is calming.

Does it reduce it? Not sure. Hope so. Certainly with the looming loss of residuals like crawler grass is nice to have.

If crawler and kerb go I can't see winter beans being much fun.

 

[average farmer]

Pre em and no pre em , was done when the crop was up and a sharp frost forecast.

 

[DrWazzock]

Anyone had success with a hoe?

Just been through my sugar beet with a hand hoe getting the odd blackgrass plant out. Dotted about here and there, with the occasional small patch. It was bad 4 years ago. Had to glyphosate an entire tramline of wheat but getting there now with spring cropping and breaks. No let up though. One plant is a plant too many. Quite like a won with the hoe if there aren’t too many when it can get tiresome!
Tractor hoes aren’t that successful as they just tend to drag it over or mow it rather than hoik it out.

 

[warksfarmer]

Do you think the Triton is stirring up too much bg? Are you drilling late enough for the system?

Heavy land here (not much bg but some) is 2*ww, cc, spring beans, 2*ww, cc, spring oats. Oats, beans, cc and wheat after beans direct drilled. The cc acts as a mulch that supresses the weeds for long enough for the oats to be competitive.
Pre em dff/ffct important. Rarely use avadex or Atlantis, but will if needed.
I've tried spring wheat a second wheat to give a double spring crop but it's crap. Spring barley better for bg suppression, but we've enough barley in the light land rotation really. The double spring crop as a strategy works well - a cc is important but don't get it too thick - the light needs to get in to let the BG grow, and the sun & wind to dry it in spring. Cc's suck very little moisture out in winter, more facilitate drainage and soil structure ime
Rotational or 'as necessary' ploughing works, but once ploughed, don't do it again for 5yrs, or it's a waste of time.

The reason I asked about chemical approach is because cultural control doesn’t work. I’ve a 60 acre field that was bad BG in its last winter wheat crop in 2014. Since then it’s been in spring cropping exclusively bar one crop of winter rye. In all the spring crops BG was not an issue mostly. There was one spring wheat where it appeared in July in places but still then it wasn’t bad. In winter rye you couldn’t find a BG plant basically. Coupled to this it’s been in DD with either a Weaving disc drill or a JD 750 a couple of times. It’s not seen a plough for 12 years.

It’s also had various cover crops in between spring crops. Sometimes a simple mustard cover or at times a more expensive mix with phaeclia and raddish etc but always direct drilled.

So I thought we’d cracked it hence putting it back into winter wheat this last autumn. Now, we haven’t done enough chemical wise but take a look at this picture. There’s more appearing by the day to the point I’m considering silaging it because next year it’s going to be worse.

So exclusive spring cropping, direct drilling, cover cropping and repetitive use of glyphosate for 8 years hasn’t worked and its back with a vengeance.

As for the Triton then it drilled the last spring crop and we had no issues so no as it’s not working at plough depth to bring it up. I run it set mostly for minimal disturbance rather than shattering.

 

[Spud]

The reason I asked about chemical approach is because cultural control doesn’t work. I’ve a 60 acre field that was bad BG in its last winter wheat crop in 2014. Since then it’s been in spring cropping exclusively bar one crop of winter rye. In all the spring crops BG was not an issue mostly. There was one spring wheat where it appeared in July in places but still then it wasn’t bad. In winter rye you couldn’t find a BG plant basically. Coupled to this it’s been in DD with either a Weaving disc drill or a JD 750 a couple of times. It’s not seen a plough for 12 years.

It’s also had various cover crops in between spring crops. Sometimes a simple mustard cover or at times a more expensive mix with phaeclia and raddish etc but always direct drilled.

So I thought we’d cracked it hence putting it back into winter wheat this last autumn. Now, we haven’t done enough chemical wise but take a look at this picture. There’s more appearing by the day to the point I’m considering silaging it because next year it’s going to be worse.

So exclusive spring cropping, direct drilling, cover cropping for 8 years hasn’t worked and it back with a vengeance.

On the contrary, surely. The spring cropping regime has worked well, it's putting it back to winter wheat that's shown the weak point.

One thing is for sure, chemical control will fall down if the cultural side isn't in order.

If it's not been ploughed for 12yrs, and you now have a bad bg year, now would be a good time to plough it. Slowly. Carefully. With narrow furrows and narrow tyres, perhaps after you've silaged it. Let it weather, stale seedbed, drill October with as little disturbance as possible.

Your only other option is go back to what you've just proved works - spring cropping.

 

[Flat 10]

The reason I asked about chemical approach is because cultural control doesn’t work. I’ve a 60 acre field that was bad BG in its last winter wheat crop in 2014. Since then it’s been in spring cropping exclusively bar one crop of winter rye. In all the spring crops BG was not an issue mostly. There was one spring wheat where it appeared in July in places but still then it wasn’t bad. In winter rye you couldn’t find a BG plant basically. Coupled to this it’s been in DD with either a Weaving disc drill or a JD 750 a couple of times. It’s not seen a plough for 12 years.

It’s also had various cover crops in between spring crops. Sometimes a simple mustard cover or at times a more expensive mix with phaeclia and raddish etc but always direct drilled.

So I thought we’d cracked it hence putting it back into winter wheat this last autumn. Now, we haven’t done enough chemical wise but take a look at this picture. There’s more appearing by the day to the point I’m considering silaging it because next year it’s going to be worse.

So exclusive spring cropping, direct drilling, cover cropping and repetitive use of glyphosate for 8 years hasn’t worked and its back with a vengeance.

As for the Triton then it drilled the last spring crop and we had no issues so no as it’s not working at plough depth to bring it up. I run it set mostly for minimal disturbance rather than shattering.

What chemicals did you use? I can see why you got caught out you wouldn’t have expected such high pressure. When was it drilled also please?

 

[warksfarmer]

On the contrary, surely. The spring cropping regime has worked well, it's putting it back to winter wheat that's shown the weak point.

One thing is for sure, chemical control will fall down if the cultural side isn't in order.

If it's not been ploughed for 12yrs, and you now have a bad bg year, now would be a good time to plough it. Slowly. Carefully. With narrow furrows and narrow tyres, perhaps after you've silaged it. Let it weather, stale seedbed, drill October with as little disturbance as possible.

Your only other option is go back to what you've just proved works - spring cropping.

Or another way of looking at it is that continuous spring cropping doesn’t rid land of BG like some of the large input suppling companies with ‘trials’ suggest.

The problem with spring cropping is that the return is much less than winter. It’s good strong land that will do 4t of wheat in a good weather year without being silly with fertiliser use. So harvesting 1.5t of spring barley due to a dry spring and then being worth £100/t isn’t the best!

 

[warksfarmer]

What chemicals did you use? I can see why you got caught out you wouldn’t have expected such high pressure. When was it drilled also please?

Drilled last week October. Glyphosate and defy.

 

[ajd132]

The reason I asked about chemical approach is because cultural control doesn’t work. I’ve a 60 acre field that was bad BG in its last winter wheat crop in 2014. Since then it’s been in spring cropping exclusively bar one crop of winter rye. In all the spring crops BG was not an issue mostly. There was one spring wheat where it appeared in July in places but still then it wasn’t bad. In winter rye you couldn’t find a BG plant basically. Coupled to this it’s been in DD with either a Weaving disc drill or a JD 750 a couple of times. It’s not seen a plough for 12 years.

It’s also had various cover crops in between spring crops. Sometimes a simple mustard cover or at times a more expensive mix with phaeclia and raddish etc but always direct drilled.

So I thought we’d cracked it hence putting it back into winter wheat this last autumn. Now, we haven’t done enough chemical wise but take a look at this picture. There’s more appearing by the day to the point I’m considering silaging it because next year it’s going to be worse.

So exclusive spring cropping, direct drilling, cover cropping and repetitive use of glyphosate for 8 years hasn’t worked and its back with a vengeance.

As for the Triton then it drilled the last spring crop and we had no issues so no as it’s not working at plough depth to bring it up. I run it set mostly for minimal disturbance rather than shattering.

If we grow wheat it has blackgrass in no matter what we do in terms of no till and multiple spring crops. We just have to accept it I think. Keep it at a level.

 

[warksfarmer]

If we grow wheat it has blackgrass in no matter what we do in terms of no till and multiple spring crops. We just have to accept it I think. Keep it at a level.

Absolutely but this isn’t an acceptable level. We couldn’t rogue this.
At the minute I’m thinking it’s going into a silage ley for 5 years and renting it out.

 

[teslacoils]

I'll show a picture of December drilled wheat after fallow. Half got a prem of 0.6 liberstor. The other half didn't. You can make your own mind up how much flufenacet you need after that.

 

[Hindsight]

Drilled last week October. Glyphosate and defy.

Why just only Defy? Where was the flufanacet. You have skimped last Autumn my friend. Hey ho.

 

[B'o'B]

Spring crops reduce bad BG, they don’t eliminate it. You only need one pathetic little BG plant per (approx) 20m2 in a spring crop to put you in the situation you are in with your winter wheat.

By far our worst field for BG here this year is in rye, which was peas last year and rye the year before that. The problem with rye is it is impossible to do a good job rogueing in it and it needs drilling a couple of weeks too early. Peas are also hard to rogue properly.

I read an article today saying how hybrid barley reduced seed returns to just 66g/m2 down from +400g/m2 in wheat. That’s all well and good but that is still a seed return of 660kg/Ha!!!!!! And what’s the TGW of BG? Let’s guess at 10g? So a rough estimate of 66,000 seeds/m2 returned in 1 year! In a “good crop” for reducing seed return!!!!

My policy is if I see a BG plant anywhere on the farm I spray 1m2 minimum out around it. In winter wheat I am winning the battle with nothing but a modest pre-em and a knapsack of glyphosate in May/June. In all other crops I am going slowly backwards at present. Because rye doesn’t like very much pre-em and wants drilling early. Peas are not very friendly to BG, but just enough slip under the radar to make things a little bit worse. (We found the same with linseed and WOSR both currently dropped from the planned rotation)
How many BG plants can you tolerate per m2? Answer = 0/m2 otherwise you are heading rapidly in the wrong direction!

 

[wanton dwarf]

Absolutely but this isn’t an acceptable level. We couldn’t rogue this.
At the minute I’m thinking it’s going into a silage ley for 5 years and renting it out.

Aren't we in the dark on the matter of control and monitoring of the seed bank within the soil profile ?

I've heard about seeds "Rotting" in the ground year on year. But if there are Billions of seeds in the soil wating to germinate how long is a 40% year on year reduction going to take to create control if ever ?

Is there any established demonstrable science which shows and documents seed reduction ?

Seems as though we are all walking in the dark hoping we are heading in the right direction whilst HMG pulls the rug from under out feet.

We need to understand where we are.

 

[ajd132]

I'll show a picture of December drilled wheat after fallow. Half got a prem of 0.6 liberstor. The other half didn't. You can make your own mind up how much flufenacet you need after that.

My neighbour had a run that he must have run out of chemical. With the chemical is terrible blackgrass, without the chemical it is diabolical.

 

[rs1]

I’ve got wheat after a 3 year grass ley with a bit of black grass in it, this was hay ground. Makes you think that the black grass was lurking in the rye grass hay. I’ve farmed it for 3 years so I don’t know the black grass levels.

 

[Flat 10]

Aren't we in the dark on the matter of control and monitoring of the seed bank within the soil profile ?

I've heard about seeds "Rotting" in the ground year on year. But if there are Billions of seeds in the soil wating to germinate how long is a 40% year on year reduction going to take to create control if ever ?

Is there any established demonstrable science which shows and documents seed reduction ?

Seems as though we are all walking in the dark hoping we are heading in the right direction whilst HMG pulls the rug from under out feet.

We need to understand where we are.

Yes there is science. 70% year on year.

 

[Castlemaine]

Its a battle with the odds in bg favour, when just one plant has 20 tillers and 150 seeds per head , even if you kill 99.5% of bg your still only treading water, sad thing is I know when roughing this plant that seeds from the mother plant this grew from are waiting in the soil for next yr and the next

 

[B'o'B]

Its a battle with the odds in bg favour, when just one plant has 20 tillers and 150 seeds per head , even if you kill 99.5% of bg your still only treading water, sad thing is I know when roughing this plant that seeds from the mother plant this grew from are waiting in the soil for next yr and the next

If you look in the bottom of the crop around it, you may well find a little brother just waiting to keep the seed bank topped up as well. Which is why we use a knapsack to do the rogueing.

 

[Castlemaine]

Yep totally agree , knapsack is the way forward, the big bg plants are easily pulled and spotted, it’s the small one that wrap around the wheat and have tiny heads , also are probably the ones that are later flowering so get combined before seeds have fallen and are spread far and wide