Kale and swedes

JD-Kid

Member
any one planted both as a mix did it work or the kale covered the swedes over to much
not planing to drill them just spun on with fert but could drill every other row if needed would just be a bit of a pain
dry summers tho so swedes might not go too well could be the only factor.
 

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
as you say Swedes arent keen on competition and Kale puts up a big canopy :oops:

i can see your logic tho, feedwise, high energy and high protein..
 

JSmith

Member
Livestock Farmer
I’ve done it before it it’s a bit hit an miss really, old chap always liked a swede to eat so he’d buy a eating variety an make me mix it in when drilling kale for the cows! Some times it worked well but our ground is very poor so not really a good test!!
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
I DD’ed a 50/50 mix of swedes and kale with the Simtech one year, puttting swedes in one side of the drill and kale in the other, with a few blocked coulters to make the seed rate 50/50. The idea was to end up with alternating 3m strips of each, which worked well.

My plan was to be able to lift the fence over the kale strips, to put in the middle of each swede strip as often as necessary. Well that didn’t work very well, as the kale grew so tall it was a job to lift over cleanly, and the lambs were all trying to run under it as I went along.
I reverted to putting a new fence up in the swedes, then taking up the previous fence with the RAPPA winder instead.

I haven’t bothered repeating it as the lambs didn’t do any better than those on 100% roots, and life’s too short to make the job complicated for the sake of it.
 

JD-Kid

Member
have seen it strip planted but did not see it done again think reasons Neilo spoke of
talked to a rep said if lowering the kale rate to let swedes have a chance the stems will be like posts on the kale.
if it turned dry the kale would also give the swedes a hard time competing for any rains
might just be a case of trying 2 hight kales a short and a med to try and get a thicker deeper window of leaf area
 

Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
Do farmers up north still grow Cabbage , used to see them at Buith Tup Sale feeding them in their pens , a crop that seems to have been lost on the way , in the 60ts it was a common sight on Dairy Farms , as a green crop i dont think it could be beaten for yeild and quality
 

JSmith

Member
Livestock Farmer
Dad used to grow cow cabbage back in the day, get them as big as dustbin lids he used to say! I suppose there are easier ways to grow forage now than planting cabbage plants!!
 

Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
Dad used to grow cow cabbage back in the day, get them as big as dustbin lids he used to say! I suppose there are easier ways to grow forage now than planting cabbage plants!!
I drilled mine with a precision drill same as swede , but i did do the trasplanting thing as a kid , spend nearly a week in a field doing thstv
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
We used to back when we used a ridger, not as much a mix as putting a kilo of kale in "all" the swede seed or vice versa, and one run was always pure swede seed so you had a clear track for the electric fence

surprising how they grow even with 800g swede and 1.5-2kg of kale per hectare, some parts of paddocks seem to grow one over the other and most of it grows both

mixing it is good but also much harder to chip the swedes if you grow too much, whereas standalone swedes are chipped quicker by fewer stock
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Do farmers up north still grow Cabbage , used to see them at Buith Tup Sale feeding them in their pens , a crop that seems to have been lost on the way , in the 60ts it was a common sight on Dairy Farms , as a green crop i dont think it could be beaten for yeild and quality

Cabbages fed in quantities to rams will make them infertile, at least temporarily, which is useful in the run up to tup sales. That, and blowing their heads up artificially, which used to be seen as a good thing in days of old. :facepalm:

On the yield, would cabbages not be of a very low DM, so DM yield might not be as high as you think.
 

Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
Cabbages fed in quantities to rams will make them infertile, at least temporarily, which is useful in the run up to tup sales. That, and blowing their heads up artificially, which used to be seen as a good thing in days of old. :facepalm:

On the yield, would cabbages not be of a very low DM, so DM yield might not be as high as you think.
They fatten lambs like stink
 

Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
received_978810399345578.jpeg
Rebound Hybrid and Frisia Turnips, sown 6 weeks ago
received_1129281824267062.jpeg
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

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