No-till's environmental credentials under threat...

[Brisel]

Tripod instead of fluquinconazole?

 

[Barry]

I am 95% certain it isn't about anymore.

 

[Fat hen]

I think it's very important to be aware of the well-known psychological biases that are at play in all of us. When you declare your allegiance to one school of thought / standpoint, your brain immediately starts to act in a self-justificatory way. It is therefore more likely to make causal links between things that support that standpoint than between things that don't.

For example, I don't seem to have as many slugs this year as some people - it must be because of my diverse rotation, no-till and lack of insecticides. On the other hand, if my crops don't look as good as my conventionally tilling neighbours, it probably isn't because of my no-tilling, but rather some other range of factors that does not conflict with my school of thought.

I think if you can help it, it's better to remain on the fence wherever possible because the above mechanism is so strong that it seriously compromises truth finding. For sure, pick one method over another, but be very wary of leaning intellectually one way or the other too quickly. Jonothan Haidt and Daniel Kahneman are well worth reading on this point.

I think managers, such as @Brisel, who are working for other people cannot afford to have flights of fantasy into the unknown without very good evidence. If you're going to challenge the conventional wisdom, you'd better be right because being controversially wrong is something that does not do a great deal for your career prospects and is a lot worse than being uncontroversially wrong.

Objectivity is key but not always easy.

 

[Feldspar]

Objectivity is key but not always easy.

Agreed, but what I reject is the council of despair from some that because one can't be perfectly objective it is not worth trying to be more objective.

 

[Hillplanter]

Not a reply that some members here will like. But why not run a disc in front of the drill?
Better establishment from mineralisation and slugs eggs will be wiped out. Has to be better than repeatable spreading pellets especially after rape.
You can always give up the practice again in the future but for now you are running a business that needs to make money.
I'm not sure if the aim of DD here is for weed problems. That may rule out the
harrow.

 

[Louis Mc]

Not a reply that some members here will like. But why not run a disc in front of the drill?
Better establishment from mineralisation and slugs eggs will be wiped out. Has to be better than repeatable spreading pellets especially after rape.
You can always give up the practice again in the future but for now you are running a business that needs to make money.
I'm not sure if the aim of DD here is for weed problems. That may rule out the
harrow.

I think when people reccommend shallow disc passes they sometimes forget that one of the reasons people want to no-till/strip till is that their land can turn into complete mush if they get the wrong weather before/after a shallow cultivation. Direct drilling allow seed to be put In the ground while maintaining surface soil structure/drainage from previous crop roots. In some case shallow discing may help but in others it will do a lot of harm

 

[Feldspar]

I think when people reccommend shallow disc passes they sometimes forget that one of the reasons people want to no-till/strip till is that their land can turn into complete mush if they get the wrong weather before/after a shallow cultivation. Direct drilling allow seed to be put In the ground while maintaining surface soil structure/drainage from previous crop roots. In some case shallow discing may help but in others it will do a lot of harm

I think that is something that is a definite positive about our soil type. As I mentioned elsewhere the lightest bits of soil on the farm have this problem, but if you create mini clods in the autumn on the main soil type, they weather down nicely overwinter to leave a nice tilth to drill into in the spring.

 

[Brisel]

Most of the biology you want is in that top couple of inches too.

 

[Feldspar]

Most of the biology you want is in that top couple of inches too.

But as we've seen this spring, wanting to preserve that biology can't come at the expense of poor crops. I think it's possible that overall the soil will thank you far more for growing strong crops with higher biomass even if it requires a bit of vertical tillage.

 

[Hillplanter]

Exactly. Not much biology on bare patches of WW after rape. Nothing there but pellet residue.

 

[bactosoil]

Most of the biology you want is in that top couple of inches too.

Biology is not a constant mass in the top couple of inches ,very little testing ever done to assess this though this revels a lot about soil health and consequences in output to plant life

 

[yellow belly]

before this year I would have planned to cultivate with discs shallowly 2 inches max not the 4 to 6 many farmers think is shallow this will turn to mush

at 2 inches preferably 1 inch the slug number are reduced
last autumn because the weather i did not get the discing done so resorted to notill and slug pellets ,when I was inspecting the crop the day after drilling on a foggy day I found an adult slug every 5 to 10 yards when I got down to soil level I found plenty of slug eggs but also found a lot of black preditor beetles
I was prepared to look every day and only apply slug pellets when the wheat was just emerging if I saw slugs then
I never saw slugs when the crop was emerging so never used the pellets every seed grew also not had an insecticide but very little bydv early October planted

the field is ragdale silty clay and over the years slug have been a problem if cultivated seedbeds were not properly consolidated

the environment will benefit from notill if the pests are controlled by nature
the more notill I do the more I see the homes of preditors are not disturbed so they proliferate because their preditors cannot pick them off when the cultivater makes them homeless

what do I do this year
still plan to disc shallowly after rape different fields to last year

the wheat fields after rape will be into notill beans and will get mole drained either in the autumn or the spring or possibly both if the weather allows

with notill I have found I have to be flexible and work with the weather (but we have always known that any farming system has to work with the weather )

if notill cannot contain black grass when should we plough
post rape would be a good time especially if it is dry and the worm are below 8 inches deep
I do not like the idea of ploughing heavy land for spring crops because if we plough when it is not dry enough the soil suffers
the best spring crops I have grown after ploughing have always been when it is ploughed early and dry the next best spring crops have been with the minimum amount of cultivations incorporate ash and notill or nowdays with true notill

 

[The_Swede]

What do the collective make of Mr Zimmers (advancing biological farming) assertion of little damage being done by shallow cultivation (rotovating) the top two inches or so then?

He seems definite on not disturbing the deeper 'mid zone' as he refers to it though re protecting worms etc.

 

[Feldspar]

before this year I would have planned to cultivate with discs shallowly 2 inches max not the 4 to 6 many farmers think is shallow this will turn to mush

at 2 inches preferably 1 inch the slug number are reduced
last autumn because the weather i did not get the discing done so resorted to notill and slug pellets ,when I was inspecting the crop the day after drilling on a foggy day I found an adult slug every 5 to 10 yards when I got down to soil level I found plenty of slug eggs but also found a lot of black preditor beetles
I was prepared to look every day and only apply slug pellets when the wheat was just emerging if I saw slugs then
I never saw slugs when the crop was emerging so never used the pellets every seed grew also not had an insecticide but very little bydv early October planted

the field is ragdale silty clay and over the years slug have been a problem if cultivated seedbeds were not properly consolidated

the environment will benefit from notill if the pests are controlled by nature
the more notill I do the more I see the homes of preditors are not disturbed so they proliferate because their preditors cannot pick them off when the cultivater makes them homeless

what do I do this year
still plan to disc shallowly after rape different fields to last year

the wheat fields after rape will be into notill beans and will get mole drained either in the autumn or the spring or possibly both if the weather allows

with notill I have found I have to be flexible and work with the weather (but we have always known that any farming system has to work with the weather )

if notill cannot contain black grass when should we plough
post rape would be a good time especially if it is dry and the worm are below 8 inches deep
I do not like the idea of ploughing heavy land for spring crops because if we plough when it is not dry enough the soil suffers
the best spring crops I have grown after ploughing have always been when it is ploughed early and dry the next best spring crops have been with the minimum amount of cultivations incorporate ash and notill or nowdays with true notill

For OSR going into winter wheat, do you think a shallow movement is going to encourage or hinder slugs? We have a Terrastar to use and would like to drill the wheat with the 750a. Looking at videos of it, I'm worried it will leave too much loose soil which will actually encourage slugs rather than hurt them. I wonder whether just raking once or twice and leaving the surface solid would be better.

 

[Dan Powell]

What do the collective make of Mr Zimmers (advancing biological farming) assertion of little damage being done by shallow cultivation (rotovating) the top two inches or so then?

He seems definite on not disturbing the deeper 'mid zone' as he refers to it though re protecting worms etc.

@York

?

In my experience I have a lot of small worms in the top two inches in the spring when the soil is damp. Don't think they would enjoy being rotavated. Maybe if the soil is dry at the surface then the worms won't be affected.

 

[The_Swede]

Even if no worms I'd say that a rotovator and anything but dry soil isn't normally a match made in heaven... Perhaps a more reasonable tool over in the drier USA re worm killing and smearing tendencies!

 

[Simon Chiles]

For OSR going into winter wheat, do you think a shallow movement is going to encourage or hinder slugs? We have a Terrastar to use and would like to drill the wheat with the 750a. Looking at videos of it, I'm worried it will leave too much loose soil which will actually encourage slugs rather than hurt them. I wonder whether just raking once or twice and leaving the surface solid would be better.

If you use the Terrastar I'd then roll it well. Firstly it'll help restructure the soil and make it more weatherproof, secondly, being firmer,it'll be harder for the slugs to move around and thirdly you'll get a better germination of weeds and volunteers that you can spray off either pre drilling or slosh some roundup in with the pre ems.