Drilling linseed on the green

[Nick.]

Due to a serious lack of spraying days and breakdowns I've not been able to get some of our covers sprayed off.
Do I get these sprayed ASAP and leave for a couple more weeks, or drill on the green and add glyph to the pre-em ?

I'm quite happy drilling all the other crops on the green, but not tried linseed into this much cover before.
Some of it is a little bit thicker than the picture.

 

[Clive]

Drill and glypho later is the best way anyway really

 

[Brisel]

How much soil moisture is in there?

 

[Nick.]

How much soil moisture is in there?

It was pretty dry, but we had 5mm last night.
It still seems cold enough to me at the moment.

 

[Fuzzy]

Maybe consider rolling the tall stuff now at 90deg to drilling ?

 

[Simon Chiles]

Due to a serious lack of spraying days and breakdowns I've not been able to get some of our covers sprayed off.
Do I get these sprayed ASAP and leave for a couple more weeks, or drill on the green and add glyph to the pre-em ?

I'm quite happy drilling all the other crops on the green, but not tried linseed into this much cover before.
Some of it is a little bit thicker than the picture.
View attachment 501682

In the good ol' days when you could get a sub for growing flax I used to drill thousands of acres straight into all sorts of green cover. Always grew well. Once having drilled a crop into thistles and docks as high as the bonnet of the tractor the previous year I could even see where a coulter had blocked in the old crop, not that it really mattered, nobody ever did anything with it they just wanted the sub.

 

[Nick.]

Thanks for the replies, there's a nice lot of phacelia and vetch left in there that the frosts didn't finish off. Plus plenty of beans, the only thing concerning me slightly is the wheat volunteers.
This might just tip our agronomist over the edge, when I drilled some wheat into 18" OSR volunteers he looked at me as though I'd got two heads.

 

[Andrew K]

Thats not a lot of cover, you should drill when soil temps rise over 10 degrees IMO.

 

[Nick.]

Thats not a lot of cover, you should drill when soil temps rise over 10 degrees IMO.

I presume you are talking soil temp ?

 

[Andrew K]

Yes, I am

 

[britt]

If you have thick grass or wheat volunteers it will kill the linseed if it's not dead before drilling. I've had stripes across fields where there were volunteers behind the combine. I can't remember if it was a wet spring. The linseed germinated got to the cotyledon stage then went yellow and withered.
The cover in your photo looks ok to drill into though.

 

[Nick.]

Quick update, this is on one of our heaviest banks. Only 4mm of rain on it and that was yesterday.

 

[Timbo1080]

View attachment 517170 Quick update, this is on one of our heaviest banks. Only 4mm of rain on it and that was yesterday.

That looks great. I've found over the last few years that if the cover that you drill into remains standing, the flea Beetle don't attack it. A dewy morning reveals lots of spider webs bridging the tops of the standing cover crop....My guess is that the flea Beetle jump to avoid predators and get caught in the webs.
Where I have bare soil (cc of beans), the linseed established fastest, but then got hammered by FFB. Where the cover is dense but standing (Oats, Winter Barley, Wheat, Blackgrass as straights), it is slower to establish, but has no Beetle damage at all, and where the cover is flat to the ground, the establishment is somewhere in the middle, and the Beetle have a field day under the flat cover.
Where we have drilled into chest high OSR, establishment is very fast, but Beetle hit it rapidly - I don't believe that it is only FFB that likes Linseed.

Good luck, I think that will be a cracking crop, please keep us posted.

Edit: Sorry not to have commented earlier - Missed the thread. We usually drill straight into winter oats, and have never had a problem. Wouldn't/have never tried with anything other than linseed though. This year we have been buggering around with various other covers to see if there are alternatives to the oats, hence the beans, wheat, Barley and OSR.

Tim

 

[Nick.]

Thanks Tim, this was a CC of phacelia, vetch, millet, beans, linseed, and a bit of mustard plus the usual volunteers.
We definitely had more moisture under the cover opposed to any bare patches.
No real sign of any FB. Hopefully it'll keep ahead of any.

 

[Nick.]

Just been walking some of the linseed, this is an ex-stewardship field corner. 10 years out of production, topped about 6 weeks ago then limed.
Half of it was brambles 3feet high, glyph plus Li700 after drilling.
Looks some good seed @Great In Grass

 

[Great In Grass]

View attachment 518750 Just been walking some of the linseed, this is an ex-stewardship field corner. 10 years out of production, topped about 6 weeks ago then limed.
Half of it was brambles 3feet high, glyph plus Li700 after drilling.
Looks some good seed @Great In Grass

Coming along nicely there Nick.

 

[Timbo1080]

Don't think a large Winter Barley cover is a particularly favourable environment for Linseed drilled on the green. Defiantly some 2 Simons, and a huge problem of Flea Beetle attacking it under the laid Barley.

 

[martian]

We've been waiting for rain before drilling our one field of linseed...it's now rained, is it too late?

 

[Nick.]

We've been waiting for rain before drilling our one field of linseed...it's now rained, is it too late?

I know they're slightly different, but I've got soya and millet still to drill.
Surely the conditions are right now for these crops to fly away ?
I tend to ignore the date completely now and go by conditions.

 

[Simon Chiles]

We've been waiting for rain before drilling our one field of linseed...it's now rained, is it too late?

No, it'll be ok.