I'm jealousView attachment 848168Only sprayed once for volunteer wheat, no insecticide. Astrokerb to go on end of January once canopy opened up. Pigeons had a go about 6 weeks ago but haven’t recently- bangers not out yet. Old leaves covered in phoma are now senescing, no fungicide yet.
What rate do you spread the chicken muck at?
Frankly mine is looking worse than yours... 5 out of 6 fields are a total failure, and the remaining 1, the plants are smaller than in your picture....Certainly a difficult year but walked out late (September) drilled block today that has had me concerned all autumn and was pleasantly surprised
no inputs at all so far apart from the farm saved seed and 50kgs DAP at drilling
Going to be a battle keeping pigeons off all winter but frankly I didn’t expect it to get this far
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I’m going to walk some of the more forward stuff tomorrow so will post some pictures of that - the difference just 10 days establishment date has made this year is remarkable
I do think we all need to keep a close eye on alternatives.Reading through this thread and hearing about some of the losses due to one chemical being withdrawn. Are the nfu and other lobby groups, when saying we need neonics for sustainable osr production talking complete bullpoo? How can it be sustainable if a whole section of the industry collapses due to one chem going? I guess the same could be said for glyphosate or ctl. Is farming in the U.K. just ludicrously reliant on a couple of chemicals (which will get resistance eventually anyway) therefore making the industry wildly unsustainable anyway and are we just lying to ourselves about how great we are? Are we reaching the end of chemical farming?
I’ve done lots of alternatives for osr this year and it’s looking okay, didn’t use any insecticide. But I’m not putting it down to anything I’ve done, I just don’t think we have much flea beetle in this area. There’s also been very little osr grown round here for the last 4 years. Planning another chunk next year but we may be slowly building populations up again.I do think we all need to keep a close eye on alternatives.
Reading through this thread and hearing about some of the losses due to one chemical being withdrawn. Are the nfu and other lobby groups, when saying we need neonics for sustainable osr production talking complete bullpoo? How can it be sustainable if a whole section of the industry collapses due to one chem going? I guess the same could be said for glyphosate or ctl. Is farming in the U.K. just ludicrously reliant on a couple of chemicals (which will get resistance eventually anyway) therefore making the industry wildly unsustainable anyway and are we just lying to ourselves about how great we are? Are we reaching the end of chemical farming?
Totally agree that’s why I said the same goes for glyphosate and ctl. The point was we are so reliant on a couple of chemicals and is that sustainable in any way?Have you considered what the loss of non selective herbicides like glyphosate will do to your husbandry system? What will you do instead?