- Location
- Berkshire
Not something we see on light downland chalks, our disadvantage being flints and Sarsen stones!!Normally we would see BG from the cracked ground in spring.
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Not something we see on light downland chalks, our disadvantage being flints and Sarsen stones!!Normally we would see BG from the cracked ground in spring.
I rented some fields out for spuds last year. £350 acre. Fields are utterly shagged and headlands are grim.
Ok it had been a tough year but by the time you take out the lower yield because of the shagged headlands, the extrs cost of having to restructure next year as well I reckon it wouldnt have been £200-50 acre income max. And a cost to the following yield for a year or two.
Dont miss them. Would need £500 acre to do it again
Very true. Direct drilling here on hanslope clay (if done properly and well) is the way foward for us. We can’t grow many crops like you boys! Three crops in a year is awesome.Yep I wouldn't want that situation neither. Potatoes are harvested from mid-April onwards continually through to the Autumn in Cornwall. Salads provide the perfect timing to get OSR established and correct the soil damage. No DAP required, no soil pests, no volunteers to spray. Also sow oil radish cover crops into spud ground, spray off in Feb then tickle with a Carrier then direct drill. We grow OSR so land not suited to other brassicas but many get three crops in one year. Early spuds, followed by Cauli/cabbage followed by SB. The spuds leave plenty of phosphate behind, the Brassica boys plenty off lime and N. Normally very high SB yields following a very profitable double break for no work or risk, other than perhaps a mess to sort. A pass with a Sumo/Topdown is not really that expensive compared to the overheads saved and higher margins returned. For some to adopt a full approach to direct drilling would make no sense in certain parts of the country. Every business is different and so are farms and different areas of the country.
That is a risk I’ll grant you. Cash flow could get a bit lumpy. I’m going to put a lot of effort into trying to do it right and over deliver on all options to make sure I’ve got some wriggle room.
fist year we will harvest no OSR - it established, grew and was flowering a couple of weeks ago looking not the best crop but “reasonable”. it was however stuffed full of csfb larvae so we so sprayed it all off and it’s now linseed !
thankfully with FSS, zerotill and our low inputs regime it’s not too big a disaster but do i continue to try or just change rotation ....... that’s the question i’m considering right now
i’m favouring simply not bothering with it at the moment, it’s not a big % of our area so pretty sure i can make a rotation work without it, in fact it would probably set up a better rotation really
low fixed cost structure is again key to this - it gives you options that most simply could not begin to consider !
not quite everythIng, TFF members mostly post without agenda and those that do have agenda are easy spotted, direct driller magazine has just 25-30 of its 100 pages paid for, the remaining 70-75 is free speech. Most magazine work on at least 80% paid for content, many are 100% . Frankly I have no idea why anyone reads them anymore ?
I take a lot what farmers say about their own successes particularly with a pinch of salt. We are all motivated to portray to others an overly rosy assessment of reality. For example, some no till farmers like to explain away failures / reduced yields as just a one-off, or down to some other factor rather than their down to their new system, whereas any perceived improvements are automatically entirely due to their new favours system. Some are worse at this than others of course.
It's too high risk. Anyone care to calculate even a low input system including land work and rent, up to mid Feb? Gone are the days of 4.5t a hectare at 360 a ton.
I'm even considering......winter beans.
How much N had you put on before you decided to pull the plug? What date was the OSR drilled?
On the original topic, we have two halves of OSR this year. That which was planned and drilled early, and then a panicked 150ac which we put in later worried about tariffs in a no deal scenario. First half has been so much easier to grow. Thought OSR was going backwards a month ago, but has now pulled together in even 70ac of the later drilled 150ac. Overall have 100ac out of 480ac which is unacceptable (i.e. sure it won't do 1 t/ac) if it becomes the new normal. Lessons: drill very, very early. Would start on 25th July if I could, but can only start 1 August this year due to scheme rules. Apply a lot of early N. Use FSS & no pre-em. Claydon followed by rolls fast behind to conserve moisture. Don't go deep and lose moisture and create clods.
Government needs to look at the rules on this. OSR ran out of N this year even in bits (overlaps) that had twice the allowed amount. Only area of OSR that has looked superb all season had winter barley sprayed off in May last year and had probably equivalent of 100 kg/ha N to play with. You need big, big plants as quickly as possible and then early N in the spring to power the plants away from the larvae. As @teslacoils says though, this is becoming higher and higher risk. Putting a lot of N on in the summer and having the crop fail is quite a lot of N to waste. Will see what the yields we get this year, but if it still gives a decent margin (until oil price crash would have been highest GM crop for the 4th year running I think) we will probably roll the dice until we get a proper disaster.
I take a lot what farmers say about their own successes particularly with a pinch of salt. We are all motivated to portray to others an overly rosy assessment of reality. For example, some no till farmers like to explain away failures / reduced yields as just a one-off, or down to some other factor rather than their down to their new system, whereas any perceived improvements are automatically entirely due to their new favours system. Some are worse at this than others of course.
So is the stuff that didn't do very well a result of you not adopting a full inversion soil tillage system?
Remember it’s usually down to poor management (I.e me!) rather than the system.I take a lot what farmers say about their own successes particularly with a pinch of salt. We are all motivated to portray to others an overly rosy assessment of reality. For example, some no till farmers like to explain away failures / reduced yields as just a one-off, or down to some other factor rather than their down to their new system, whereas any perceived improvements are automatically entirely due to their new favours system. Some are worse at this than others of course.
Remember it’s usually down to poor management (I.e me!) rather than the system.
Remember it’s usually down to poor management (I.e me!) rather than the system.
Beware of cabbage root fly from drilling that early @Feldspar