Put in grass for 5 years....
5 years without income ? better to keep growing poor combinable crops on it
I only do livestock nov-march - ie not arable months
Pressing reset - shall I plough a field ?
- Thread starter Clive
- Start date
5 years without income ? better to keep growing poor combinable crops on it
I only do livestock nov-march - ie not arable months
To be honest I have done nothing about this yet, been busy with other projects recently
Will get the pics and soil samples soon and make some decisions from there as I guess I need to consider what spring cropping I'm going to grow pretty soon
Will get the pics and soil samples soon and make some decisions from there as I guess I need to consider what spring cropping I'm going to grow pretty soon
normandyfarmer
Member
- Location
- Saint Valéry en Caux, France
rent it for potatoes ? That's an other reset button !
Baling Hay
Member
Why not?
fundamentally because I have no skill or knowledge as a livestock farmer, my focus is on maximising my arable area as that what I know and understand best
marco
Member
- Location
- tipperary, ireland
5 years ago you didn't have much skills or knowledge about no-till. didn't stop you though
that was learning a new technique not a new industry
Livestock is simply not really my thing, I enjoy them being on the farm but I will never make a great stockman. What we have right now is best of both worlds really with the winter sheep and we are stacking enterprise on the same acres rather than starting separate enterprises, to my mind this makes far more sense
know your limitations ! and I know mine !
- Location
- south staffs
moving the sheep to it next week in phase one of "operation fix it" !
AgriAlice
New Member
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Sheep are off now, they will have done it some good
Will get glyphosate soon as weather allows and go into spring barley
Not going to plough but I will run the carrier over it pre drilling to sort out the potential residual chemical issue that I reckon is causing this
Post some pictures of field periodically
Spring barley should get up and go if everything incl weather is right, no setbacks.
Don't rush SB
Plough the little Wooly buggers in. The highest yielding bit of this farm is the bit of former scrub where dad buried the fallen stock in the 1970's. Not uncommon to see the yield meter hit 18-20t/ha of wheat through that patch. It tillers so well that it looks like you could walk on top of the ears in June. There are patches in the same field that are equally bafflingly crap...
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Hartwig
Member
- Location
- Scheggerott, Germany
My first thought is that this patch is not so high-yielding because of all the buried stock there, but because it was scrub for a long time !? So not tilled to death like all the old fields are more or less.....
Could that be ?? What exactly do you mean with "scrub", how did it look before it was converted to an arable field and when did that happen ??
1971, long narrow strip, lighter textured soil, runs along a slight depression.
2000, showing up as a wetter area. The field boundary has been straightened.
I can't help but think there *may* be a spring running along the depression (L to R) at rooting depth, supplying the plant with a 'Goldilocks' mix of nutrition and moisture, but if there is it never flows on the surface. Surprisingly the crop has never gone flat, but looking at my notes it measured 930 ears /m2 in 2013 (field average low 600's, no VRS).
I regard this odd area as a kind of 'rosetta stone' that shows the potential yield of the whole farm if every limiting factor is removed. I'm still trying to repeat its alchemy across the whole farm but with little success.
Mursal
Member
Leave a strip uncarriered to see if it makes much difference............