It’s been a year of arrivals so far. Our third child William arrived safely in January, then our new drill arrived a couple of weeks later. Unfortunately, spring decided not to arrive until the middle of April. When it finally did “Monsoon Monday” was chasing it away again! We had finally finished drilling (so we thought) on the 26th of April, then on the 29th we had 51mm of rain. In total we had 70ml of rain in the six days following drilling. The picture below shows a field of linseed under water, it was under water for 6 days and didn’t make it. Our friends a few miles upstream had 90ml in that one day, all their water came through our farm making the flooding worse. A spring to forget.
Our new drill is a second-hand 3m New Zealand made Cross Slot (CS). I was lucky to get a LEADER grant to help pay for it (soften the blow). I decided on a Cross Slot as I wanted the flexibility of 3 hoppers and being able to plant 2 types of seeds at different depths simultaneously, ideal for our intercropping. The coulter design of the CS will hopefully mean hair-pinning is no longer the issue that it was with the JD750a.
This spring we have planted oats with clover, beans with rape (see picture), linseed, linseed with lentils, SOSR and barley. The barley has really suffered from the flooding damage, but the other crops look reasonable. All we need now is warmth, sunshine, it to rain regularly and they will perform well, surely we are owed some decent weather?
Some of our Bean/Rape intercrop is part of the Diversify project. This project is investigating intercropping on farms all over Europe. We have intercrop and monocrop plots, so we can compare. I will keep you updated on the results as the season progresses. Fingers crossed for a kinder summer!
https://issuu.com/directdriller/docs/direct_driller_issue_2/52