Ryegrass

[robs1]

But surely the timing and number of ‘cuts’ is irrelevant? It’s getting the cut before the seed shred from the heads?

Yes, was browsing while waiting for a customer and didn't phrase it very well, stopping seed return by cutting it at the right time is the key, this has worked very well with bg, but is much harder with ryegrass as it regrows regardless of the timing of the cut and sends a seed head up quicker each time. Sheep grazing after a second cut would be ideal but we have too many footpaths for that, so far we have always been lucky with the second cut which we take as hay that the weather has been kind and allowed us to cut before seed is viable, wont always be so fortunate. Leaving seed on the surface is far better than burying it imvho for any weed.

 

[Cowcorn]

All well and good grassing it down, would you fancy stock on a block of land 6 miles from home with no fences, no water and near a rough housing estate with all the fun that that entails.

Dont even mention stock and housing estates !! Even if you put holstien bulls in the fields the hoors would end up riding them like rodeo bulls

 

[Cowcorn]

We haven’t drilled before the end of oct for years and always glyphosate first at full rate (never used glyphosate at anything other than full rate). Tried rotational ploughing. Tried continual spring cropping.

One rotational question is we’ve dumped osr. The worst RG fields haven’t had osr for 10 years without checking and haven’t grown beans for probably 20 years.

Maybe youre coming at it from the wrong angle ?? I have a lot of smallish fields a fair bit from the yard that are used for silage and zero grazing . The get ploughed out every few years and back into arable and we dont have any ryegrass poking through . But we would try and get the wheat drilled in early Oct to have a strong stand going into winter and we use plenty of slurry and lots of N first split in late feb or early March to drive the crop . A thin or hungry crop wont shade out or compete with ryegrass . I know that this wont suit your low input system but might be worth a try .