Farm open day with No-till Bill

[Jim Bullock]

I suppose the question is for how long will that continue? Certainly beans for us are a great way to not clean up the fields, often damage the soil and lose money, so no break crops would be great in my book.

Won't last for sure...had a very small area of beans last spring and the following crops will yield much better without a doubt... Continuous cereals (on our land.. using our systems) are not sustainable. It will take us four years at least to recover from the 2012 "wipe out".

 

[BSH]

As Martian said, It would be interesting to know exactly who was the money behind this event. I thought the Brazilian 'revoloutionary' was very interesting. Sounds like he is the best man to talk to about cover crops as apparently he was the one who got Gabe brown going on them.

 

[martian]

Ademir Calegari

As Martian said, It would be interesting to know exactly who was the money behind this event. I thought the Brazilian 'revoloutionary' was very interesting. Sounds like he is the best man to talk to about cover crops as apparently he was the one who got Gabe brown going on them.

 

[martian]

For those who went on the farm tour, this is a shot of the first stop where we'd just drilled some Mulika

 

[Feldspar]

View attachment 41603 For those who went on the farm tour, this is a shot of the first stop where we'd just drilled some Mulika

How has the rest of the spring drilling gone? And when did you do the bulk of it? How much rain have you had since the farm tour?

 

[martian]

View attachment 41652 We drilled the rest of the spring stuff, starting the following week, into the sprayed off covers. So this is Mulika, drilled a fortnight after the other. All drilling went in increasingly well, the last drilled being peas and rape mix which went the best. The first bit of rain we've had since the tour was half an inch of rain yesterday. Picture taken this morning, the half inch disappeared as it landed

 

[marco]

How long had the cover been sprayed off?

 

[martian]

Sprayed 5/6th March, drilled 31st March, 175kg/ha. ie 25 days. Untreated seed out of the shed, might have gone at slightly higher rate, but only just had enough to do acreage we wanted at 175kg (400 seeds/m2 at 40 tgw, thought that would do...)

The first one was drilled 17th March, same rate

 

[Feldspar]

Any chance @martian of some up-to-date pictures of the fields we visited on the tour?!

 

[martian]

Looking for my camera...

 

[Feldspar]

Looking for my camera...

Is the search area boundary defined in terms of fields or rooms? If it's the former I won't hold my breath!

 

[martian]

Car...

 

[Feldspar]

Car...

Manageable (assuming you know where your car is).

 

[martian]

Found it!
This is the spring wheat from the first stop of the tour

with a very large dog in to give you some idea of the scale.
Dodgy winter wheat behind and to right (drilled into two year ley, evidence of chilesing there but filling out a bit now) and peaola crop in the distance, now a pea crop

 

[Feldspar]

Found it!
This is the spring wheat from the first stop of the tour View attachment 46215 with a very large dog in to give you some idea of the scale.
Dodgy winter wheat behind and to right (drilled into two year ley, evidence of chilesing there but filling out a bit now) and peaola crop in the distance, now a pea crop

So are you pleased with how the spring wheat has turned out? Looks a good crop form the picture.

 

[martian]

Pleased so far, hoping the frit flies don't reappear

 

[pejay]

Sprayed 5/6th March, drilled 31st March, 175kg/ha. ie 25 days. Untreated seed out of the shed, might have gone at slightly higher rate, but only just had enough to do acreage we wanted at 175kg (400 seeds/m2 at 40 tgw, thought that would do...)

The first one was drilled 17th March, same rate

How many heads per sq. metre are you targeting and how many tillers

 

[martian]

Sorry pejay, never answered your question. Mostly because we didn't have a target, just want a three tonne crop...
For the benefit of @Feldspar, here are some updated pictures
Spring wheat, where we were standing on the first stop of the tour

Pea crop, slightly thin as was meant to be peaola, but the rape didn't make it

Second wheat, with unimpressed dog

 

[martian]

While we are at it, The dirty crop of (Invicta) wheat, behind last years peaola

 

[martian]

The other side of the hedge, wheat behind two year ryegrass/red clover ley (with odd ryegrass volunteers)

The little pictures are some wheat we had given up and we were planning to spray off and cover crop. On the whole ok, with BG patches. Going into two year ley this autumn