Blackgrass

[Matt77]

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.

Chatting to various people about Avadex and most seem to believe it works better than pre em sprays if it’s a dry season, from what I’ve seen over pass few years, with patch’s missed by mistake or not driving to field edge, Avadex works. Probably wrong as my memory isn’t a strong one but I think it’s £30-40/ha

 

[Lincsman]

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.

My soil needs some deepish cultivation, despite the clay cracks that appear in the summer setaside type areas will flood in the winter, if it isnt moved. DD has been tried in various forms, but the temporary ponding always ruins the crop.
The technique now used is move it and get it dried out and not too fine, then watch weather forecasts like a hawk.

 

[ollie989898]

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.

If you grow beet and spuds then make maximum use of the spring residual chemistry they offer. I know they can get pricey but I have successfully grown beet on the most minging BG infested land you have ever seen and cleaned it up with beet, the populations were so low you could have walked the rows and rogued them out easily.

If you put an ad in the local paper telling folk they can help with some organic weed control and get paid to get a sun tan by walking crops you will get a good stack of folk and 10 of them can cover some land very very quickly so its cheap/acre.

 

[teslacoils]

It's interesting this year. The BG control in wheat is sh!t where wheat follows osr. I put this down to last year's osr being total crap. 2nd cereal barley is weed free. Sigh.

 

[Daniel]

Chatting to various people about Avadex and most seem to believe it works better than pre em sprays if it’s a dry season, from what I’ve seen over pass few years, with patch’s missed by mistake or not driving to field edge, Avadex works. Probably wrong as my memory isn’t a strong one but I think it’s £30-40/ha

Yes but I thought it only worked in conjunction with the rest of the pre-em chemicals? Or could you drop the other pre-ems and go Avadex autumn and Broadway star in the spring?

 

[Jo28]

It's interesting this year. The BG control in wheat is sh!t where wheat follows osr. I put this down to last year's osr being total crap. 2nd cereal barley is weed free. Sigh.

i totally agree with this. we have rogued for years. all fields will be rogued again this year except one after osr where it has gone from clean ww2 to un rogueable ww1 after the osr crop last year. will probably be spring barley next year, havent grown that on our farm since 1989! chemistry in osr is crap!

 

[ajd132]

Similar discussion to this on twitter last night. Is flufenacet being abused now it’s available straight and are too many people using worthless half rates of it on spring barley? Personally we are only using big rates of it on winter wheat partly not to overtly rely on it. The spring barley smothers BG out.

 

[Matt77]

Yes but I thought it only worked in conjunction with the rest of the pre-em chemicals? Or could you drop the other pre-ems and go Avadex autumn and Broadway star in the spring?

It can be used on its own but I’m afraid I don’t know how successful it would be as I’ve always managed to get both on these last few years of use, or agronomist always used to suggest if I’m unsure of the weather get the Avadex on and wait on the weather for the pre em. I suppose it’s always going to better as part of a stack.

 

[Wheatonrotty]

We definitely have more about this year, the worst is in 1st wheat after osr. It's also noticeably worse where the worst osr was.
Our cleanest is some wheat that was put in after we wrote the osr off in October, this is a 3rd cereal following SB which followed WW.
Drilling date is definitely a big factor and a few days can make a big difference with germination seeming to fall off a cliff. Unfortunately that point varies from year to year with the conditions, last year the end of October was too early, another year it would be fine. On heavy ground it's a bit of a knife edge but I think we have to be more willing to plan for a spring crop and bung wheat in if the conditions happen to be right.

 

[teslacoils]

Similar discussion to this on twitter last night. Is flufenacet being abused now it’s available straight and are too many people using worthless half rates of it on spring barley? Personally we are only using big rates of it on winter wheat partly not to overtly rely on it. The spring barley smothers BG out.

Not sure. We are using a lot of flufenacet in wheat. But four years of spring barley experience, and more of spring oats, has shown grass weed pre-em on spring cereals to be a waste of time. To the point where they are not used and in the barley we use the seed rate, late drilling and not ploughing to defeat the bg. In spring barley the money is better kept for late wild oat control if needed .

 

[teslacoils]

Re osr, why I think osr is failing comes partly as we are moving more soil to plant it. Subsoil it in and we get BG in bands, which relies on the graminicide performing well. We have ace BG control in the osr this year but at the cost of pre-em, cmax, crawler and astrokerb and being able to travel pretty much at will in autumn. Add in hybrid seed cost and fbt rent and there is a fine margin for profit / break even yield is scarily high.

Last year's osr was the perfect storm of bobbins and has led to high seed return. Ground was simply too hard to plough. I expect this one event has put me back five years of good work.......and has led to the almost total removal of osr from my cropping.

 

[Two Tone]

Re osr, why I think osr is failing comes partly as we are moving more soil to plant it. Subsoil it in and we get BG in bands, which relies on the graminicide performing well. We have ace BG control in the osr this year but at the cost of pre-em, cmax, crawler and astrokerb and being able to travel pretty much at will in autumn. Add in hybrid seed cost and fbt rent and there is a fine margin for profit / break even yield is scarily high.

Last year's osr was the perfect storm of bobbins and has led to high seed return. Ground was simply too hard to plough. I expect this one event has put me back five years of good work.......and has led to the almost total removal of osr from my cropping.

Interesting. I've gone away from planting OSR in wide bands and back to drilling it in narrow rows. This gives more competition against the BG and seems to give us far less of a problem on the following wheat crop.

I no longer need to use much Cmax or any Crawler at all.

 

[ajd132]

Not sure. We are using a lot of flufenacet in wheat. But four years of spring barley experience, and more of spring oats, has shown grass weed pre-em on spring cereals to be a waste of time. To the point where they are not used and in the barley we use the seed rate, late drilling and not ploughing to defeat the bg. In spring barley the money is better kept for late wild oat control if needed .

Absolutely agree, I know plenty of people using expensive flufenacet and Avadex programs on spring barley, it doesn’t control the BG and had half killed the crop this year!

 

[Brisel]

I used half rate Liberator + half rate Crystal in a bad brome infested field of spring barley. That's all I was allowed under the label & EAMU. It did suppress the brome but has kept the crop back too.

 

[ajd132]

Re osr, why I think osr is failing comes partly as we are moving more soil to plant it. Subsoil it in and we get BG in bands, which relies on the graminicide performing well. We have ace BG control in the osr this year but at the cost of pre-em, cmax, crawler and astrokerb and being able to travel pretty much at will in autumn. Add in hybrid seed cost and fbt rent and there is a fine margin for profit / break even yield is scarily high.

Last year's osr was the perfect storm of bobbins and has led to high seed return. Ground was simply too hard to plough. I expect this one event has put me back five years of good work.......and has led to the almost total removal of osr from my cropping.

Cultivating for osr if you have bad BG is madness IMO

 

[Godber]

We Autocast our rape followed by a straw rake and rolls. Treated with CMax and Kerb the control has been good with this low disturbance sowing.
After the rape stubbles have greened up it gets a shallow Carrier pass trying not to disturb deeper Blackgrass seed.
A couple of fields got rutted by harvest traffic and we decided reluctantly to flat lift down to about 9 inches. These fields have Blackgrass in places so do not mix the soil profile if possible.

 

[Gong Farmer]

We were advising holding off pre-ems on spring barley last year to avoid slowing down what needed to be a fast emerging and developing crop after the very late sowing that was typical. Didn't regret it.
Beginning to think that vigorous spring barley with no pre-ems gives better black-grass control than slightly less vigorous with pre-ems.

 

[teslacoils]

Cultivating for osr if you have bad BG is madness IMO

Yup. But while we have had some success with less cultivation, we've had plenty of disasters. Hence the conundrum. If we grow rape to get a yield to pay for the chem, we need to move soil. Easier to give it up.

 

[Flat 10]

We Autocast our rape followed by a straw rake and rolls. Treated with CMax and Kerb the control has been good with this low disturbance sowing.
After the rape stubbles have greened up it gets a shallow Carrier pass trying not to disturb deeper Blackgrass seed.
A couple of fields got rutted by harvest traffic and we decided reluctantly to flat lift down to about 9 inches. These fields have Blackgrass in places so do not mix the soil profile if possible.

You wouldn't think a flatlift would bring any up would you?

 

[Brisel]

We Autocast our rape followed by a straw rake and rolls. Treated with CMax and Kerb the control has been good with this low disturbance sowing.
After the rape stubbles have greened up it gets a shallow Carrier pass trying not to disturb deeper Blackgrass seed.
A couple of fields got rutted by harvest traffic and we decided reluctantly to flat lift down to about 9 inches. These fields have Blackgrass in places so do not mix the soil profile if possible.

Shallow rooted BG will be easier to kill with Kerb/Crawler