Elgar off the heap, vertigo off the heap. (Sim-tec drill)
View attachment 724608
Which are you taking to harvest & how will you take the other out?
Elgar off the heap, vertigo off the heap. (Sim-tec drill)
View attachment 724608
Which are you taking to harvest & how will you take the other out?
Elgar off the heap, vertigo off the heap. (Sim-tec drill)
View attachment 724608
Hello @Richard III , what seed depth do you aim for with your Simtech when drilling OSR and do you have any tips for setting up the machine to place those small seeds at the right depth? We did our first fields of OSR and small seed cover crop mixes this year and I think emergance is a bit on the low side and it was hard to get a shallow enough placement and still make a proper slot.
I normally aim for about 25mm depth and it has always worked fine, although it is usually wet here at sowing time, so doesn't matter if the tine runs very shallow. However this year was very dry at drilling and I set the drill slightly deeper to try and find moisture. I set up on a heavy patch and didn't realize it was going in deeper on light areas, where it was frequently running deeper than 50mm. It all came up, but took longer and made me very nervous for a few days. Where a tine got bent and the seed went in even deeper, emergence was definitely significantly reduced. The forecasters had got the weather forecast wrong and I finished drilling in the pouring rain as usual!
Sorry,I don't really have any tips for you. All I tend to do with the drill is set it so it just gets the seed in the ground when running through the shallow bits. Oilseed rape seems quite forgiving on seed depth, but I don't think all small seeds are though.
I find OSR quite hard to please in a no-till environment, but in a drought year like this has been it could be affected by herbicide residue or other weird factors. We drilled at low seed rates again, which was the biggest mistake. Even with hybrids, we should use higher rates than in conventional systems. It's frustrating to wait a whole year to try new settings! Still I think deep seeding depth has been one of the causes of low emergence and small, weak plants. Nice stand in your case though.
Three photo taken today
Top- Dunstan wheat into a cover crop, new seed spd, 165kg/ha 300 sm2
Mid- Dunstan, fss off the combine, no dressing, 155kg/ha 280/300 sm2.
Bot- Fss osr, 7kg ha, 5kg iron max pre drill, drilled 5/9, straw raked post drilling to close the slot.
All the above fields are typical heavy land found here in the vale, silty clay loam.View attachment 724836 View attachment 724834 View attachment 724832
looking good! could you tell me what was the previous crop in the second picture?