Blackgrass trials BASE visit

[Fred]

Anyone go ,

Learn anything?

 

[Brian]

The visit to Hutchinsons site on Thursday evening was very interesting too. Some interesting cover crops and cultivations to reduce blackgrass. Work on the aleopathic effects of blackgrass was not something I had seen in the field before either.

 

[martian]

Tell us more!

 

[Feldspar]

The visit to Hutchinsons site on Thursday evening was very interesting too. Some interesting cover crops and cultivations to reduce blackgrass. Work on the aleopathic effects of blackgrass was not something I had seen in the field before either.

The burning question I had on this topic was if one was growing a spring crop would an overwinter cover crop help with blackgrass control or hinder it. Had an interesting chat to Richard Harding at the Warbuoys cover crop meeting about this. His intuition was that the cover crop would compete with the black grass and help to suppress it in the spring when it forms a mulch. My worry was that it would shade small and recently emerged black grass in the spring from glyphosate / other spray designed to kill it.

 

[Clive]

The burning question I had on this topic was if one was growing a spring crop would an overwinter cover crop help with blackgrass control or hinder it. Had an interesting chat to Richard Harding at the Warbuoys cover crop meeting about this. His intuition was that the cover crop would compete with the black grass and help to suppress it in the spring when it forms a mulch. My worry was that it would shade small and recently emerged black grass in the spring from glyphosate / other spray designed to kill it.

I have similar concern but re brome - my plan is a split spray termination - first spray about a week or so pre drill and then again just after drilling when hopefully any hiding in the spray shadows will get hit !

Maybe use a sniff of gramoxone as that first spray to open canopy up fast then follow up with robust rate of glyphosate ?

If I get that right plus a thick mulch and no disturbance I reckon I might get away from using in crop herbicides for spring crops

 

[SilliamWhale]

I have similar concern but re brome - my plan is a split spray termination - first spray about a week or so pre drill and then again just after drilling when hopefully any hiding in the spray shadows will get hit !

Maybe use a sniff of gramoxone as that first spray to open canopy up fast then follow up with robust rate of glyphosate ?

If I get that right plus a thick mulch and no disturbance I reckon I might get away from using in crop herbicides for spring crops

Small problem with that Clive. Gramoxone has been banned for 5 yrs.

 

[Clive]

Small problem with that Clive. Gramoxone has been banned for 5 yrs.

That might be a problem !

 

[Baling Hay]

Clive if your grazing your cover crops you won't have a problem getting the glyphosate onto the blackgrass.

 

[Clive]

Clive if your grazing your cover crops you won't have a problem getting the glyphosate onto the blackgrass.

Livestock is not a certainty, just a nice idea that I'm actively perusing. If it doesn't happen I will hopefully have a lot of cover to kill

 

[Brian]

Sorry for the delay in reply. With regards to blackgrass and its aleopathic effect, Dick reckoned the best approach was to never let a significant amount of blackgrass build up in a stale seed bed situation and terminating a few days prior to drilling was still going to hinder establishment of the following wheat crop. The suggestion was to roll immediatley post combining (to encourage chit) and then spray your first hit of glyphosate as soon as the first bg plant is seen and then follow up every seven days with glyphosate up until drilling. Obviously the weather will be a factor in this, in a dry year may not work. Oats looked terrific there and had competed with blackgrass more than anything else spring drilled.

It was interesting to see how much effect just a simple roll had post combining on increasing the amount of blackgrass chitted, they also tried raking too which gave a further increase. Multiple passes with the rolls only gave further smaller increases. It was also suggested that rolling post drilling may infact encourage more weeds to chit and if drill firmed seed in well enough then maybe not roll. Slugs are the obvious downside to this

With regards to cover crops over winter to supress BG, I would establish a mixture with Oats maybe and terminate well in advance of drilling as Clive suggests ans then follow up again predrilling

Probably one of the best trials I have visited for a while, was great to be there with like minded people to

 

[Brian]

Sorry to avoid confusion, spell check has corrected Mr D Neale to Richard!

 

[Baling Hay]

Sorry for the delay in reply. With regards to blackgrass and its aleopathic effect, Richard reckoned the best approach was to never let a significant amount of blackgrass build up in a stale seed bed situation and terminating a few days prior to drilling was still going to hinder establishment of the following wheat crop. The suggestion was to roll immediatley post combining (to encourage chit) and then spray your first hit of glyphosate as soon as the first bg plant is seen and then follow up every seven days with glyphosate up until drilling. Obviously the weather will be a factor in this, in a dry year may not work. Oats looked terrific there and had competed with blackgrass more than anything else spring drilled.

It was interesting to see how much effect just a simple roll had post combining on increasing the amount of blackgrass chitted, they also tried raking too which gave a further increase. Multiple passes with the rolls only gave further smaller increases. It was also suggested that rolling post drilling may infact encourage more weeds to chit and if drill firmed seed in well enough then maybe not roll. Slugs are the obvious downside to this

With regards to cover crops over winter to supress BG, I would establish a mixture with Oats maybe and terminate well in advance of drilling as Clive suggests ans then follow up again predrilling

Probably one of the best trials I have visited for a while, was great to be there with like minded people to

Spraying that much sounds like a great way to create roundup resistant blackgrass in years to come.

 

[Feldspar]

Thanks for the write-up. I'm annoyed to have missed it.

The not rolling post drilling is something I hadn't thought of. Certainly Martin Lole recommends not rolling after drilling with the Mzuri because he has not seen any benefit on the cash crop. Might be also a black-grass effect as well although I would probably balance that against the effective working of any residual chemistry.

 

[Feldspar]

Spraying that much sounds like a great way to create roundup resistant blackgrass in years to come.

Also not very practical at harvest time.

 

[Brian]

Spraying that much sounds like a great way to create roundup resistant blackgrass in years to come.

Maybe but bear in mind you would only be hitting one or maybe two leaf blackgrass. As also said not very practical at harvest time but if you saw the BG pressure on this site you would be trying everything to get on top of it.

 

[Andy Howard]

Also if you have BG that bad then you should not be going into a winter crop for a couple of years.

 

[Feldspar]

Did they talk about the effectiveness of bare overwinter fallow versus an overwinter cover crop? Also what about the effectiveness of a full year fallow versus an overwinter fallow followed by a spring crop?

 

[Brian]

One of the main themes was to get as much blackgrass chitted as early as possible and another thing they had tried was spraying hormones and other various things on blacgrass plants to break dormancy. No real conclusive results but an application of roundup on the seed heads did seem to make less seeds viable, something they are working more on.

 

[Brian]

Did they talk about the effectiveness of bare overwinter fallow versus an overwinter cover crop? Also what about the effectiveness of a full year fallow versus an overwinter fallow followed by a spring crop?

Not specifically but the general consensus was that from a soil point of view over winter cover crop would be better than bare stubble. No mention that I can recall of a full year fallow.

 

[Feldspar]

One of the main themes was to get as much blackgrass chitted as early as possible and another thing they had tried was spraying hormones and other various things on blacgrass plants to break dormancy. No real conclusive results but an application of roundup on the seed heads did seem to make less seeds viable, something they are working more on.

Don't suppose they said when the latest you could spray black-grass with round-up to ensure no viable seeds? Have been having an argument about this question recently.