Recreational Cultivating?

[turbo]

But spring drilling gives us winter stubbles for feeding winter birds!

Would rather have wild bird mix and feeders around the farm witch in my opinion is better for the birds especially English partridge,very little left in the stubble if you know how to set up the combine

 

[Spanish]

Agriculture is the science of depends. Never one season equals another

 

[Drillman]

Didn't say establish cover crop after spring barley.

What yield can you get on beans?

What is your rotation?

Establishment plough and combi drill then roll.

OSR is weaving subdisc then combi drill


Normally wheat, 2nd wheat/spring barley, winter/spring barley, break crop usually OSR.

Beans looked well and did 2.4 ton acre.

 

[fred.950]

Plenty of no tiller have both disc and tine drills. I don't think there is any such thing as one drill for all situations.

Apart from a power harrow combination




Packs bags and runs from direct drillers carrying burning crosses

We have both a disc drill and a tine drill and last Autumn had an uncanny ability to pick the wrong one

 

[snarling bee]

What I have to evaluate is what is it that other people do that will work for me, on my farm.
IMO conservation ag will take decades to turn my soil into something that you can't make pots out of. Therefore I am not going to start unless I am paid to or forced to. But I don't plough very much and my cultivation strategy is getting shallower as time goes on. I don't do much subsoiling and I definitely don't do recreational tillage.
I have been to numerous DD trials/farms and know several who do it, and I have made my own mind up. For me, and only me: a) over winter cover crops, prior to a spring crop, on very heavy land do not work. b) DD will work occasionally. c) strip tilling will work, but that is not DDing or conservation tillage, but a step towards it.
So, please don't tell me how to run my farm, or that I don't understand it, or that I am a poor farmer, or that I don't care, or that I am unprofitable. Worst of all, Clive or anybody else, please don't tell HM Govt that conservation tillage is the way we must all run our farms. My soil doesn't erode, doesn't drain, but will self structure and weather to a tilth.
Rant over.

 

[snarling bee]

And this is what it was drilled into

Looks great.
So tell us more.
Cover crop cost including establishment? Slug pellet use? Cultivation? Seed rate? Where are you? Soil type? Does the whole farm look like that? Rotation? Blackgrass? How many years have you been in conservation ag? Can I visit when all this is over? If I had done the same thing on my farm would it have worked?

 

[SilliamWhale]

Looks great.
So tell us more.
Cover crop cost including establishment? Slug pellet use? Cultivation? Seed rate? Where are you? Soil type? Does the whole farm look like that? Rotation? Blackgrass? How many years have you been in conservation ag? Can I visit when all this is over? If I had done the same thing on my farm would it have worked?

The cover crop was OSR regeneration. I still swath down here because I don't want to use roundup pre harvest and I am always afraid of high winds getting OSR before ripening. So we do lose a little more seed at harvest this way but its not a lot.

No slug pellets. No cultivation. Sprayed off after drilling with 3lha of glyphosate plus 0.4 liberator. Don't know what blackgrass looks like. Seed rate 75kg acre of farm saved wheat cleaned out of drier. It won't do 4t/acre this year though as I can tell its not that sort of year, I can tell. But it is totally capable of it some years. On balance my second wheat yields aren't so good as the land isn't so strong but we had some 4t/acre second wheat last year so there is potential there.

Rotation tends to rotate around WW/WB (or SB or WW)/ OSR/ WW/ SB (or WW or WB depending)/ Spring Beans. Odd bit of grass and odd bit of sheep brassica when I can be bothered which is less and less nowadays as fencing won't last. All white straw baled, FYM applied thoughout rotation always on top, never tilled in.

I have some red soil and some loam so its not heavy. But the red soil is funny stuff - will go to concrete after ploughing so was always difficult to till but can be hammered into shape with a power harrow but

I do make plenty of mistakes - I've had a few problems with herbicide carryover with establishing OSR and so I'm going back to cultivating 2" for OSR and using zypar as the herbicide to get my confidence up again for a year or two. I have used a short disc seeder wand that worked well but would like to go to a tine drill for OSR ideally for a few years. I also developed a stupid habit of drilling spring barley too deep and that definitely cost me yield a couple of years back.

Otherwise winter wheat is very easy, spring beans very easy. I used to try to claim OSR or Spring Barley was more difficult but it wasn't - it was me!

Come and visit anytime. Always better to go and see a farm with you own eyes rather than just looking over the hedge. I'll show you the crap bits as well (ie after potatoes and headlands)

 

[snarling bee]

Thanks for the info.
I DDed into OSR regen once and used 3 or 4 doses of slug pellets, whereas next door field was cultivated and had none. slug pellets cost more than cultivation so what is the point?, especially when the cultivated yield was more as well by a significant margin.

 

[ajd132]

Thanks for the info.
I DDed into OSR regen once and used 3 or 4 doses of slug pellets, whereas next door field was cultivated and had none. slug pellets cost more than cultivation so what is the point?, especially when the cultivated yield was more as well by a significant margin.

Do you have blackgrass? If we cultivate and drill before the middle of October it usually ends up with too much blackgrass in. Low disturbance drilling does allow drilling dates to come foward somewhat. Cultivation just seems to bring up buried seed again. Just my observations.

 

[SilliamWhale]

Thanks for the info.
I DDed into OSR regen once and used 3 or 4 doses of slug pellets, whereas next door field was cultivated and had none. slug pellets cost more than cultivation so what is the point?, especially when the cultivated yield was more as well by a significant margin.

What I have found is the longer you are DD and less tilling slug levels decline. This is generally because of more beetles able to crawl around the surface eating slug eggs and also slugs tend to have less air gaps etc to lay their eggs. I think min till can make slugs worse. You won't like this when I say it but I think we manage our way into slug problems sometimes - poorly chopped straw doesn't help. I think lots of pest populations peak and decline - I personally think we will eventually see flea beetle levels decline

The other thing that helps is that any slugs tend to have osr to munch and then tend to leave the emerging wheat seed alone. I'd hesitate to say what happens on other peoples farm but on my place with two different soil types this is my experience, timing helps as well.

 

[snarling bee]

You may well be right. But I min till heavy clay and haven't used slug pellets for 4 years until this winter. Not much OSR been grown in that time though. Had some damage this year after FYM, so applied a few, bit too late though.