Blackgrass friend or foe!!

[Wombat]

I think it forces people to look at their systems.

I quite like a bit of Spring wheat as it has done us quite well. I don't find Spring Barley much good for BG control

 

[Chae1]

When we all switch to grass leys and spring barley, there will be ALS resistant poppies / cranesbill, and docks & thistles. It's all just farming the system.

That's all we grow and don't have any serious problems.

Was the bg problem not caused by farmers raping the land that there forefather's had built up fertility in using proper rotations and mixed farming

 

[Brisel]

I can remember in the 80s that sterile broom was going to be the next big bad thing.what ever happened to that
Nick...

Sterile brome is alive, well & living in no till/min till light soils! I predict it will be my number one weed when I move to strip till & no till. A greater proportion of Spring cropping will help I hope.

Already have the ALS Poppies here

A good whack of CMPP and Starane in cereals soon kills poppies. In osr you have quinmerac pre em and Astrokerb post em.

 

[shakerator]

Sterile brome is alive, well & living in no till/min till light soils! I predict it will be my number one weed when I move to strip till & no till. A greater proportion of Spring cropping will help I hope.



A good whack of CMPP and Starane in cereals soon kills poppies. In osr you have quinmerac pre em and Astrokerb post em.

Starane can be used in poppies!

Cmpp does nothing. MCPA is better. florasulam in spitfire is a different ALS with no resistance issues at present

 

[franklin]

Was the bg problem not caused by farmers raping the land that there forefather's had built up fertility in using proper rotations and mixed farming

Nope. It was caused by traditional grassland farms being changed into cereal farms through a) chemical products, b) land drainage grants and c) subsidy systems that encouraged wall-to-wall wheat.

Go to a farm with bad BG. Get on your hands and knees. Speak softly to the soil and ask it if it what it really wants to be. It wants to be pasture. How many really bad BG farms used to be dairys / lowland stock farms and were ploughed up in a mad rush pre-IACS? I expect a fair few.

 

[Hindsight]

A good whack of CMPP and Starane in cereals soon kills poppies. In osr you have quinmerac pre em and Astrokerb post em.[/QUOTE]

Not totally sure you are correct there but am sure others will soon say. In cereals using pendimethalin pre or early post emergence is a good start for a resistant poppy programme. MCPA. Florasulam.

http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/guidan...+Group+Resistant+Weeds+in+the+UK+and+Research

For reference this text taken from the above link

Resistance in the UK seems to be due mainly to ALS target site resistance with little evidence of enhanced metabolic resistance. Alternative (non-ALS) herbicides, such as pendimethalin, MCPA and ioxynil + bromoxynil are effective at controlling ALS-resistant populations

 

[Brisel]

Apologies to all. My erroneous advice was from my cocktail of Harmony M (SU), CMPP and fluroxypyr used to clean all broad leafed weeds out of my spring barley, particularly fumitory, poppy, polygonums, thistles and cleavers.

 

[shakerator]

Apologies to all. My erroneous advice was from my cocktail of Harmony M (SU), CMPP and fluroxypyr used to clean all broad leafed weeds out of my spring barley, particularly fumitory, poppy, polygonums, thistles and cleavers.

Starane will be a good option for your new poppy break crop !

Not starane XL though! Dow desperate to get us onto on patent product (good predictor for which products will be revoked , even neonics soon superseded by diamides)

 

[Adeptandy]

Starane can be used in poppies!

Cmpp does nothing. MCPA is better. florasulam in spitfire is a different ALS with no resistance issues at present

CMPP & MCPA did nothing 2014, Starane was poor last year, did a couple of things last year that helped, but not prepared to post on a public forum

 

[Henarar]

Go to a farm with bad BG. Get on your hands and knees. Speak softly to the soil and ask it if it what it really wants to be. It wants to be pasture.

A farmer just down the road tried growing corn it was ok for a year or so then all he got was grass weeds, He said " It wants to grow grass it likes growing grass and who are we to defy it"

 

[Brisel]

I think it forces people to look at their systems.

I quite like a bit of Spring wheat as it has done us quite well. I don't find Spring Barley much good for BG control

Interesting. I have the opposite experience but then again we might be thinking about very different soil types. Heavy land will grow better SW than SB. Light land is the opposite. What kind of seed rates & drilling dates work for you?

 

[Bury the Trash]

me too i found SW to be uncompetitive mind you prob. poor variety or late drilling didnt help?

 

[Chae1]

Nope. It was caused by traditional grassland farms being changed into cereal farms through a) chemical products, b) land drainage grants and c) subsidy systems that encouraged wall-to-wall wheat.

Go to a farm with bad BG. Get on your hands and knees. Speak softly to the soil and ask it if it what it really wants to be. It wants to be pasture. How many really bad BG farms used to be dairys / lowland stock farms and were ploughed up in a mad rush pre-IACS? I expect a fair few.

That's what I meant to say. Which part made you think I thought the opposite ?

 

[Right-arm fast]

Nope. It was caused by traditional grassland farms being changed into cereal farms through a) chemical products, b) land drainage grants and c) subsidy systems that encouraged wall-to-wall wheat.

Go to a farm with bad BG. Get on your hands and knees. Speak softly to the soil and ask it if it what it really wants to be. It wants to be pasture. How many really bad BG farms used to be dairys / lowland stock farms and were ploughed up in a mad rush pre-IACS? I expect a fair few.

We have moved on from those days. Its no longer viable to have a few cattle, a few sheep, a few acres of cereals, a few acres of potatoes etc. The prices of the commodities have not kept pace with the costs and so everything is done on a larger scale to try and spread them. What we need to do is find a way around the BG problem until a new chemistry comes along as the prices wont allow us to go back to the farming of the 1950s. We can use the new chemistry to again maximise output whilst keeping an eye on the resistance issues and perhaps other techniques we have adapted along the way. I don't think we have as an industry have done much wrong its just that the way the actives are tested to meet new regulations now are so stringent as to being almost impossible to meet, whilst other actives have been banned and others have resistance and efficacy issues, this all has in effect happened in the last 5-10 years ?? The other thing we could do is to farm as a hobby and get another job so we don't have to crop so intensively, but that's just another way of subsidising farming and a crap idea anyway. Personally I think FBTs should be banned as they are too short term for farming.

 

[franklin]

Which part made you think I thought the opposite ?

It was the raping the land bit. I've seen some farms with very little BG grown on land you would *expect* to be rife with it, which grow either a W/W/R or a W/R rotation; bale all the straw; put nowt on but N etc etc. Not sure my grandfather farmed with soil organic matter much in mind either.

Do those with bad BG actually have a problem with *any* other weed in cereals?

We have moved on from those days. Its no longer viable to have a few cattle, a few sheep, a few acres of cereals, a few acres of potatoes etc. The prices of the commodities have not kept pace with the costs and so everything is done on a larger scale to try and spread them.

Yup, and at the same time salaries for sitting behind a desk have gone up 4% a year. An 80ac farm (£1m) doesnt exactly have much scope for paying a living wage if you want to grow conventional cereals. But I think you are wrong to say that a few ac of cereals, spuds, cattle, sheep is not viable. I'm sure it can be if you can supply a product to local people who value its provinance.

If you had say a small, rare breed lowland stock farm selling butchered and packed meat, could that be scaled up to 2000ac? I'd love to see a Nix pocket book where lowland, less intense beef and sheep was top performing farming sector.....and not just becuase all other sectors were doing terrible! Can a small, premium horse-hay enterprise be scaled up to 2000ac? Both this and the meat version rely on having the customer base - a whole different world to loading 500t of wheat on lorries in a day.

We all cut out cloth to fit. If it werent for BG, I dont think there would be much different done around here beyond drill a bit earlier / use less roundup. Would be just a matter of time before some other problem arises.

Personally I think FBTs should be banned as they are too short term for farming.

FBTs are bad becuase they forget that a field is not really a farm enterprise. Sheds sold for housing; the farmhouse stripped out leaves very little that can be done with a standalone field beyond grow conventional crops. A field with a small yard and a house can be a business in a way a field cannot really do.

 

[Honest john]

Please read my thoughts before saying Dick Head!!

Is blackgrass a good thing as it is making us think about everything we are doing, we have started to look at cultivation systems, cropping rotations, chemical use, and of course full farming systems with regards to profit margins.I will mention I hate the problem but I also realise the can or the bag will not rid us of the problem.
When we sort Blackgrass there will be another BIG problem,
Here we go for the experts!!

NFU say we just had a record wheat crop, so is BG such a big issue ? Or would more BG give us a better margin ?

 

[Pilatus]

Forgetting economics how did your for predecessors control blackgrass?
Is their something to be learnt from their techniques in the 21st century.?
Amazing how nature can be the better of 21st century technology,surely a lesson to be learnt there ,by all of us smug clever clogs. Some things never change.
In the 21st century with all the technology the world seems to be at war in some areas more than ever so sad .

 

[Bury the Trash]

Exactly.Look how far they send Rockets these days. the moon is old hat now none of this stuff discussed here should be any where near as challenging as sending what they do to Mars.I dont even think one needs to go to the extent of thinking out of the box.
New Chemicals development however is another matter.

 

[fudge]

There is no easy way to solve the problem. Many on here going on about grass leys, spring cropping etc. That's all well and good and depends on the situation you are in, but it also has to pay the bills. Silly amounts of blackgrass (i.e. spray off wheat field in may!) are uneconomic admittedly, but for those of us with moderate blackgrass, swapping to grass/SB isn't always viable.

I did wonder if wheat were £200/t consistently whether this would solve the problem. Spring crops with lower yields would make them viable.....but then winter cropping with higher yields would pay more.

It's basic market forces. Farmers will control BG (and all other weeds!) with the cheapest method available to them, be that out of a can, or grass/SB. It purely depends on which is the most economic way to do it, and what fits with what you want out of farming.

I very much agree with this. On farms such as ours blackgrass is nothing new, although the marketing boys talk of "zero tolerance" it is perfectly possible to farm profitably and tolerate a low level of bg. Fallow and crops such as late drilled peas give little or no seed return. Combine these with rotational ploughing etc and the foe, can be contained. Organic matter content is a great ally in the battle since it's presence improves seedbeds and trafficability thereby facilitating later drilling. I would concede that without some activity from herbicides all arable rotations would be impossible since reasonable control is required even in a spring crop.

 

[Old John]

Forgetting economics how did your for predecessors control blackgrass?
Is their something to be learnt from their techniques in the 21st century.?
Amazing how nature can be the better of 21st century technology,surely a lesson to be learnt there ,by all of us smug clever clogs. Some things never change.
In the 21st century with all the technology the world seems to be at war in some areas more than ever so sad .

Nobody grew continuous winter crops. There was no oil seed rape in UK before about 1970. Before the herbicide, IPU, no one would have thought of growing more than two w. Wheats in a row and that was very rarely done. Spring barley was grown, even on heavy soils. My father in law who had a very nice heavy land farm in mid suffolk, did very nicely, growing s barley and winter wheat alternately.
The biggest problems in those days were wild oats and couch grass.