Blackgrass

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
I f**k up every year on the same point.e.g. This on my worst BG fields only. So ww planted late Oct following beet following spring barley (both basically clean). Full rate liberator day after drilling. Top up of ffct, pdm and dff in November. Walk crop late Feb early March to see if hatra/monolith required. Decide not to bother as only a few big plants that might be too big. (Field probably only had Atlantis 3x ever so expect some activity). Now field is absolutely smothered. Convinced that most is spring germinating and that spring herb would have helped with a residual element. Made this mistake before like a prat!:(:mad::banghead:
 

Shutesy

Moderator
Arable Farmer
I fudge up every year on the same point.e.g. This on my worst BG fields only. So ww planted late Oct following beet following spring barley (both basically clean). Full rate liberator day after drilling. Top up of ffct, pdm and dff in November. Walk crop late Feb early March to see if hatra/monolith required. Decide not to bother as only a few big plants that might be too big. (Field probably only had Atlantis 3x ever so expect some activity). Now field is absolutely smothered. Convinced that most is spring germinating and that spring herb would have helped with a residual element. Made this mistake before like a prat!:(:mad::banghead:
Don't worry your not alone :arghh:
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Instead of a thread how about a subsection of combinables? There could easily be lots of BG discussions on a variety of things : Chem, cereal competitiveness, etc that would be tricky to organise into one thread.
 

Phil P

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
North West
Found some black grass in a field of wheat a couple of days ago, never had any before but it looks like it’s come back on the combine despite cleaning it down:banghead:.
So not a happy bunny at the moment:(, spent a day roguing it out so I’m hoping to get on top of it before it gets out of hand!

Dam stuff
1C92A8BA-32A8-49DF-95EA-3BFD26437B6D.jpeg

Going to be watching this thread closely for tips;)
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Is the plough the anser .?

Good ploughing is part of it, if used as part of a fully managed system to target this awful weed. Not the kind of ploughing that involves 200 hp on 5 furrows at 12 kph turning the field brown, but rotational ploughing done properly that buries the seed and not just ploughed back up again a few months later.

IMO the main culprits for a BG problem are;
  • deep non inversion tillage mixing the seed throughout the soil profile giving delayed emergence and deeper rooting beyond the reach of residual herbicides
  • combination cultivations instead of repeated surface cultivations that kill successive chits pre drilling
  • monoculture
  • few modes of action herbicide diversity - SUs like Atlantis, ACCase fops, dens & dims
  • long runs of winter cropping
  • early drilling of winter crops, especially oilseed rape and September sown cereals
  • decreasing soil organic matter
  • poor soil structure from compaction and failing drainage systems - BG is a marsh land grass that likes the opportunity provided by wet conditions that hamper competing plants like the cash crop
  • short crop rotations
  • poor seedbed quality compromising the efficacy of residuals like Kerb & flufenacet through a larger surface area and shading. Also the weathering down of clods post drilling
  • lack of cultural controls outside cash crops e.g. stale seedbeds
  • low seed rates and wide row spacing giving less crop competition
  • machine hygiene carrying seed around - cultivators, balers & combines mostly
  • cultivator drills breaking clods down exposing ungerminated seed
That's not an exhaustive list, but a few to start with.
 
the most effective arable cropping to reduce bg is consecutive spring crops planted after april 1st

standard use of avadex where possible

dry spring summers would help a lot as bg cannot germinate and produce seed from mid august to end of may
the bg that germinates late may only produce a few unnoticed heads these then proliferate and lead to a problem 2 years later after 2nd cereal

thin sparce osr is a problem less than 80 strong plants in the spring gives space for bg to germinate in march when the residual autumn spray has run out
 

Daniel

Member
We don’t have what most would call a black grass problem, but it’s still increasing every year.

Sandy loam to fen peat soils, well drained.

We never used to apply any autumn herbicides but a few years back started with Orient and Sempra. (Pendimethalin and diflufenican).

Last autumn on the worst fields this was upped to Wicket and Movon (prosolfucarb, flurtamone, diflufenican and flufenacet)

There is still BG at roguable amounts, much of it seems to have come up from the drought cracks which opened up in March/April, maybe early soil cracking will defeat whatever combination of pre-emergent herbicides you do?

We have an 18 metre boom spreader picked up for £200 in a sale with an Avadex kit for a specific job with canary seed. Is this something we should consider? Would we still need the pre-ems spend or could that be reduced?

Rotation is Ww, Sugar Beet, Ww, Potatoes, Ww, Linseed/other combinable. So a good spring bias.

Also, from this summer, the only straw sales will be baled by our own round baler, no outside square balers coming in, if the customer won’t take rounds then it gets chopped.
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
We have gone from min till with rotational ploughing of wheat and osr, absolutely terrible blackgrass to shallow cultivation’s and direct drilling with a proper rotation 40-50% spring crops and apart from a few fields we have had huge success. Later drilling or zero till of winter wheat also makes a huge difference. Big herb stacks on winter wheat but the spring crops get nothing , it’s expensive and doesn’t do enough/usually going very dry/stunts the crop. Will have Rougers going through about 400ha of winter wheat v soon.
 

down n'dirty

Member
Location
South Wales
For anybody rogueing black grass- a word of warning! I have been going back to the same small patch every other day for the past 4 weeks and have always found new heads peeping up in the crop of oats. Not sure how much longer they will keep appearing for but it is very easy to miss fresh green heads just popping up
 

Nick.

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Kenilworth
I always carry a little 2l garden sprayer with glyphosate in. Both on the sprayer and truck when I’m doing my rounds.
I find if you can see one plant sticking up there’s nearly all ways loads more in the bottom of the crop.
I know it doesn’t look pretty but we also walk any bad fields with knapsacks. I couldn’t imagine how long or much it’d cost to rogue it all.
 

Lincsman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
In my experience 50% of improved control is got for FREE... just drill later, last week of Oct or if looking ok a week later preferably, it does not get much publicity as it does not sell steel with glossy paint or chemical.

Before the reply comes its impossible on heavy land, I too thought that, but thats how we got to crop failures, better no crop than an expensive failure, but with cultivation tweeks I have done it to the extent its now nearly all rogue-able.
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
In my experience 50% of improved control is got for FREE... just drill later, last week of Oct or if looking ok a week later preferably, it does not get much publicity as it does not sell steel with glossy paint or chemical.

Before the reply comes its impossible on heavy land, I too thought that, but thats how we got to crop failures, better no crop than an expensive failure, but with cultivation tweeks I have done it to the extent its now nearly all rogue-able.
Similar here. However I have noticed if you properly zero till you can bring drilling date foward. Any kind of cultivation means much later drilling.
 

Chalky

Member
We have rogued here for last 6 years. Almost eliminated the weed from areas where it was present. Treat a field with any sort of historic problem as a full stack herbicide + avadex regime-as much to get to a rogueable level as anything. No spring or autumn Atlantis/Pacifica used. Worst carr & marsh now into 3 year rolling grass leys for AD plant. We have blackgrass down to a level way below what I inherited-at a cost-but what cost the tail wagging the dog?

This spring remarkably clean. I likewise walk headlands spot spraying weeds at the edge of the crop & in the 'no go zone' carefully, so perennial grasses fill in the canopy & stop further growth. Borrowing an Iseki & 1m flail to run round fields with bits outside the crop in ww & osr; we have made a conscious effort to leave an overly wide '2m' strip, and use an end nozzle with half a pattern to give full herbicide rate load to the edge of the crop. THIS HAS BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL and I would encourage everyone to do it!
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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

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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/
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