Does No-Till solve all our problems?

[Simon Chiles]

Simon you are probably right...but we have soils/fields where we have been very successfully been direct-drilling and using cover crops for the last 15-18 years but we have others where we have had crop failures year upon year with ever increasing levels of BG be it Autumn or Spring sown crops. There comes a point where you have to question whether what you are doing is right (especially if you are share or contract farming land) so we have to look back at history and in some cases except that we have to make some fundamental changes. For example even Centurian Max does not work on some of our crops so we have to plough to bury our existing BG burden and bring up something from a decade ago which the present chemistry can deal with. Not environmentally palatable but an economic reality.

I take your point about weed burdens and contract farming agreements but I don't think the plough is the answer in this scenario. I'd use a compact disc in that situation and go really shallow with it, to the point that most people would think that you were wasting your time. Roll and spray off when it chits. Repeat if you have time or it's necessary. Then drill with a low disturbance drill. It'll get you back into a dd situation faster and destroy your structure much less.
BTW Bullock Tillage sell a useful looking compact disc that might suit you!

 

[yellow belly]

to convince the sceptics
imho one of the biggest problems that notill has is that crops do not look pretty compared with a fully cultivated properly consolidated fine seed bed

bad crops od notill cost less than bad crops of ploughed land
but also good crops on notill cost less

the good farmer on notill will also be the good farmer on cultivated and vis versa but crops will not look as good from the road on notill

 

[Fuzzy]

Totally agree...we have a Rabewerk plough which does exactly what you are saying ...it mixes to ploughing depth which is what it was designed to do to aid the breakdown of crop residues. We used to own two Kuhn ploughs which were designed to totally invert the soil which is what we now need. I accept that once we have ploughed we will have to leave the soil alone and direct-drill for the next 4-6 years. But as mentioned before its not a concept we will have to adopt across our entire farmed area however we have some land where the productivity is declining and we have to arrest this process and our present system is not working.

Is it blackgrass which is the issue on these problem fields?

 

[Rainmaker]

to convince the sceptics
imho one of the biggest problems that notill has is that crops do not look pretty compared with a fully cultivated properly consolidated fine seed bed

bad crops od notill cost less than bad crops of ploughed land
but also good crops on notill cost less

the good farmer on notill will also be the good farmer on cultivated and vis versa but crops will not look as good from the road on notill

Well said. To add, good growers know who good growers are.