Resistant Ryegrass

[sahara]

When we had the ryegrass resistance confirmed by lab testing, it was explained to me that the most likely cause of the resistance was historic half rate applications of herbicides.
The lab testing that was done showed what chems it was and was not resistant to, Glyphosate being given the all clear. From them on we made a mental note that when spraying with Glyphosate we would spray to kill, no half/weak rates etc. if there was any doubt then we would go with a higher rate, fortunately the cost of Glyphosate allows this to be done. How ever this is only one tool, all and anything should be used. Machine hygiene has I think only recently been given the importance that it deserves.
At the risk of tempting fate I will say that I think we are at the stage where we can hand rouge out plants as and when they appear, but we must have the self discipline to get out the tractor cab and go back to pull out the plant that we saw when spreading etc.
This year we also bought a 6m spring tine cultivator that allows us pre drilling, to work over our cultivated ground that has since chitted without using any chems, and at the 6m size on our farm scale its quite a quick exercise, after OSR it also helps in the battle with slugs, and generally we appear to get better seed to soil contact with the extra pass. Using this cultivator its quite nice to see all the ryegrass plants that have been pulled out and are now drying out and dieing on the surface.
I certainly agree with Farmer Roy that we shouldn't rely on Glyphosate but its a very good tool if we use it thoughtfully.
James

 

[ZXR17]

Would it be feasible to fashion a shallow cultivator with wide sweep points to "scuffle" it out, or is that merely a recipe for blackgrass.

There have been some trials carried out with cultivator blades mounted behind sprayer wheels but this was to try and reduce water run off. I would think it would be possible to replace the cultivator blades with hoe blades. It would be worth a try but I think the tramlines would possibly be too hard to hoe the grass out later in the season.

 

[ollie989898]

The rise of resistance to chemistry is one reason why I always had a layered approach that was multifaceted.

I used the right tool after assessing the circumstances. Reduced rates suited if the situation made sense; using reduced rate Atlantis worked fine in the grass-wheat-grass situations when all I wanted was to tidy up AMG but in a full time arable situation it would be madness.

This is why folk operating by not using pre em of autumn chemistry of any kind is just asking for it in my view.