Cover crop establishment

[JezzaB76]

Has anyone tried broadcasting seed, followed by terradisc followed by rolling? Thinking of doing this for this years cover crops.

 

[cquick]

Don't see why it shouldn't work
Packer on the back of the discs should be enough consolidation without the extra pass?

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Has anyone tried broadcasting seed, followed by terradisc followed by rolling? Thinking of doing this for this years cover crops.

Really depends how much moisture you get. I span on some bl seeds into oat stubble which was stubble raked on day of harvest. It was too wet to stubble rake and roll afterwards which was the original plan. But it's had nearly a week of rain so coming up. Not too bothered on there though as the oat volunteers tend to dominate in that situation anyway so I have used that as a reason to cut costs and workload.

 

[Two Tone]

It’s a bit of a balancing act here. One of the last things I want to do is disturb the top soil and get the Blackgrass to chit, which is why I’m using a Weaving GD drill instead of anything with tines to drill next year’s crop with Absolutely minimal disturbance.

I’m relatively certain that most of the surface BG has chitted since harvest and I want to bring up as little as possible, in effect not disturbing any of it from below.

I’m new to Direct drilling and will be starting to drill W Linseed into W Barley stubbles next week. I decided not to use a cover crop here this year because the rains in June had already created a cover of germinating near surface BG and Fools Parsley just before I Combined the Barley. With only a max of 4 weeks to go before it is drilled, I couldn’t see the point of a cover crop. But if I had, it would probably have been OSR broadcast onto the stubbles.

The BG has just very recently now thrown a seed head, so I have just sprayed it Roundup-ing it off - feeling rather smug that I have in effect, ploughed and power-harrowed (which is what I did last year) ready for the drill, in hours rather than days!

My worry about doing any form of cultivation ahead of actually drilling risks a far greater BG problem in the New growing crops. Even using the GD to establish a cover crop could potentially create a BG flush I just do not want, because the land will have had the GD discs through it twice!

Being new to it all, I’m very open to advice from the rest of you please.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

What cover crop and what's the ground like atm

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Has anyone tried broadcasting seed, followed by terradisc followed by rolling? Thinking of doing this for this years cover crops.

What cover crops and whats the ground like atm

 

[Northdowns Martin]

Has anyone tried broadcasting seed, followed by terradisc followed by rolling? Thinking of doing this for this years cover crops.

Would you establish a cash crop this way? In my opinion cover crops should be looked upon as an equal and method of planting given the same importance.

 

[Neddy flanders]

makes me laugh watching quadtracs and vaddys and challengers and deep drills planting cover crops then using the hashtag #rootsnotiron

 

[robbie]

Has anyone tried broadcasting seed, followed by terradisc followed by rolling? Thinking of doing this for this years cover crops.

Just this year I've put a horstine applicator onto our terradisc for establishing covers and osr ect.

It works really well, the seed Is distributed behind the tines and discs but in front of the packer. The packer moves enough soil to cover the seed and consolidate it with out the need to roll afterwards.

 

[tw15]

Sowing cover crops for years now spread oats and vetch with fertspinner small seeds with slug pelleter on either front of tractor pulling 6 mtr discs and rolls or separately . This year sowing small seeds at 24 mtr @ 14 kmh soon cover the ground discs and rollers cant keep up .