Slugs (again)

[Cutlerstom]

I have to say I agree fully with this. I want no til to work but am worried about failures. Every no til farm seems to have bad areas or fields but just says" oh I know why that's like that it won't happen again" and the next year something else goes wrong. The trouble is there is no slack in the system for crop failures. Yes there is less money spent on establishment with no til, but if it's a crop failure, it's a failure and will lose money. At the end of the day yield nearly always proves to be King. I am persevering and hope I'm wrong though.

I totally agree. As much as I want it to work, failures are not an option. We are 50% contractors and as such I haven't sold all my tillage kit. So the depreciation costs are still there, so purely diesel and labour and a bit of wearing parts are the tangible savings upfront. So probably not much more than 3/4 ton per ha at the absolute tops for a wheat crop, and if I was being a realist it's actually more like £40/ha. So I can't afford to just have a failure due to the system. Sadly I haven't got any 1st wheat behind rape ploughed this year, so have no comparison, but others in the area that have ploughed and power harrowed are saying they haven't seen a slug yet....but I keep going back to 2012 when we lost wheat behind the OSR in a plough based system. Please, please, please just be the season!

 

[Louis Mc]

Agree with both of the above. I definitely take issue with the idea that no-till won't work unless you really want it to. For me it's adopting this sort of mentality that leans too far towards idealism that very easily detaches one's judgements from reality. My contention is that if you want no-till / conservation ag to really work (and by that I mean producing crops that are both sustainable and profitable), that you have to adopt it being prepared to admit that some of the tenets may be wrong, or at least not as vital is some might think, with eyes very much open. I think do detect people explaining away failures with an overly cavalier attitude. Yes, that particular failure might be learned from and might not happen in that exact way again, but if the rate of failures (in whatever way they occur) continues then serious questions need to be asked.

Number or size of failures isn't overly important. Profit is the only thing that counts. I could point you to many fields over the years where we went for full tillage fertiliser etc etc. Driving by the road they looked complete successes. Post harvest calculations however would show them to be financial failures.

 

[Oilseed]

In high risk slug situations would a pass with a shallow cultivator or carrier type machine not help provide some loose soil to protect the seed? A shallow pass should not kill too many worms or upset soil structure.

 

[mineshalffull]

sorry for my ignorance but could somebody tell me how much an application of pellets costs with or without spreading costs TIA

 

[Cutlerstom]

In high risk slug situations would a pass with a shallow cultivator or carrier type machine not help provide some loose soil to protect the seed? A shallow pass should not kill too many worms or upset soil structure.

Absolutely. Although I have a no till drill, not all my fields are what I call ready for DD, so I only direct drilled 30% of my first wheats after OSR. The other 70% had 2 passes with our knight m press, both aiming for 2" but I am willing to admit, sometimes it may have been 3 as it's difficult to consistently keep it that shallow, but these fields have nothing like the slug damage the DD has. And they also have loads of worms. I ought to do some counts to see if I think there is a statistical worm count difference. And bury some underpants too to measure biological activity visually!

 

[Cutlerstom]

sorry for my ignorance but could somebody tell me how much an application of pellets costs with or without spreading costs TIA

Metaldehyde is around £1.45 /kg. A full rate dose of that product is 7.5kg/ha.

 

[The_Swede]

Re the worms. Put a spade in the ground whilst on slug watch mid morning Friday. Damp soil but was surprised to find the big terrestris ones were all very shallow in their burrows - a 3" or so cultivation would have knocked a good percentage of these around. The smaller rubellus types are nearly always shallow but are also far more numerous.

 

[Feldspar]

Number or size of failures isn't overly important. Profit is the only thing that counts. I could point you to many fields over the years where we went for full tillage fertiliser etc etc. Driving by the road they looked complete successes. Post harvest calculations however would show them to be financial failures.

I am not necessarily thinking of full tillage and full everything as a comparison. The sort of things that I have in mind are pretty cheap pieces of additional work that actually pay back far beyond their cost, but which might not fit into the purist's idea of what's acceptable. For the want of a nail in a horse's shoe the battle was lost type of affair is where things go wrong IMO. For example, a real purist might rule out rolling, yet a set of rolls across the drilling might make a big difference. One dose of slug pellets might make the difference between a profitable and unprofitable crop. For us, a shallow cultivation pass can make quite a difference to crop establishment and can widen weather windows significantly.

 

[Louis Mc]

I am not necessarily thinking of full tillage and full everything as a comparison. The sort of things that I have in mind are pretty cheap pieces of additional work that actually pay back far beyond their cost, but which might not fit into the purist's idea of what's acceptable. For the want of a nail in a horse's shoe the battle was lost type of affair is where things go wrong IMO. For example, a real purist might rule out rolling, yet a set of rolls across the drilling might make a big difference. One dose of slug pellets might make the difference between a profitable and unprofitable crop. For us, a shallow cultivation pass can make quite a difference to crop establishment and can widen weather windows significantly.

I get what you are saying, although I'd consider anyone ruling out a roll a fool rather than a purist. I suppose it all depends on your own situation. For us shallow cultivation tends to do more harm than good, apart from raking rape stubble which seems to have done a good job for slugs

 

[Clive]

I am not necessarily thinking of full tillage and full everything as a comparison. The sort of things that I have in mind are pretty cheap pieces of additional work that actually pay back far beyond their cost, but which might not fit into the purist's idea of what's acceptable. For the want of a nail in a horse's shoe the battle was lost type of affair is where things go wrong IMO. For example, a real purist might rule out rolling, yet a set of rolls across the drilling might make a big difference. One dose of slug pellets might make the difference between a profitable and unprofitable crop. For us, a shallow cultivation pass can make quite a difference to crop establishment and can widen weather windows significantly.

exactly the approach you need, certainly in the first few years

 

[Clive]

I get what you are saying, although I'd consider anyone ruling out a roll a fool rather than a purist. I suppose it all depends on your own situation. For us shallow cultivation tends to do more harm than good, apart from raking rape stubble which seems to have done a good job for slugs

spot on - its what works for YOU that matters but its important to be flexible, very much so in the beginning

 

[Tractor Boy]

spot on - its what works for YOU that matters but its important to be flexible, very much so in the beginning

My issue with rolling is that I only have an old 7m set of gang rolls being on a ring fenced farm. They did a good enough job behind a Claydon due to a lot of soil movement. I tried to roll a bit behind the 750 and couldn't see where I'd been! How heavy a set of rolls is needed to do any good?

 

[Clive]

My issue with rolling is that I only have an old 7m set of gang rolls being on a ring fenced farm. They did a good enough job behind a Claydon due to a lot of soil movement. I tried to roll a bit behind the 750 and couldn't see where I'd been! How heavy a set of rolls is needed to do any good?

I very rarely roll but we do have a 12m set of ld simba's that are very heavy (12t I think )

i don't think rolling does much at all behind a 750a

 

[SilliamWhale]

I very rarely roll but we do have a 12m set of ld simba's that are very heavy (12t I think )

i don't think rolling does much at all behind a 750a

I only roll behind the 750 because it makes me feel a bit better and I dare say it helps the pre em a bit

 

[Feldspar]

I only roll behind the 750 because it makes me feel a bit better and I dare say it helps the pre em a bit

It makes a difference from what I've seen. At an angle it closes the slots nicely and provides the slugs fewer places to hide. Also safer for Avadex. Big fan of the zig zag following harrow and the rolls. Barley is coming up in the row nicely now.

 

[Tractor Boy]

I am now truly depressed. Is it possible to grow a good Autumn cereal into freshly chopped cereal straw with a 750a? Last year I cut a 4t/ac wheat crop short and had problems with establishment through the trash including slugs and put it down to a lot of rain straight after drilling.
This year I've drilled into chopped Spring barley straw and chopped wheat straw. The wheat was cut quite high but the barley brackled so had to be lower. There has been minimal rain since although the soil under the trash is moist. The 2nd wheat is being hollowed by slugs despite pelleting and the wheat after barley is struggling to find moisture through the heavy trash(some won't even chit) and some looks pale and starved!

 

[Feldspar]

I am now truly depressed. Is it possible to grow a good Autumn cereal into freshly chopped cereal straw with a 750a? Last year I cut a 4t/ac wheat crop short and had problems with establishment through the trash including slugs and put it down to a lot of rain straight after drilling.
This year I've drilled into chopped Spring barley straw and chopped wheat straw. The wheat was cut quite high but the barley brackled so had to be lower. There has been minimal rain since although the soil under the trash is moist. The 2nd wheat is being hollowed by slugs despite pelleting and the wheat after barley is struggling to find moisture through the heavy trash(some won't even chit) and some looks pale and starved!

The one lot of winter barley we drilled straight into spring barley stubble was like a curate's egg. Anywhere there was any lumpy straw spread (quite a lot of places this year) the disc won't cut through the mat. Even in the field that we Terrastared twice, then rolled, then raked (definitely a mistake as this did bring the straw back to the surface) and then drilled will be a little patchy. Our winter barley is just coming through though and is generally looking encouraging. No pellets yet, although there is a little bit of slug grazing. Plan to monitor it for the time being. We are drilling second wheats atm which is the first true zero till block. Stubble cut very high and we're going more like 10kph rather than the 13kph we had been doing. Going in OK, although it doesn't take much of a straw layer to leave seed sitting in straw rather than earth. Drilling at 2 inches deep to try and get past the straw. Personally I think baling spring barley straw if zero-tilling seems necessary.

 

[SilliamWhale]

I dont know why some of you boys over east want to make things so hard for yourself. Anything following 4t/acre wheat straw is going to be tricky. Why not chop wheat straw and drill spring barley or beans and bale spring barley straw and drill osr? If growing a second wheat or winter barley into a first wheat it is going to be one of the trickiest ones to do so why start there? Or just bale it. When starting off baling is a good tool to keep you flexible

 

[Louis Mc]

The one lot of winter barley we drilled straight into spring barley stubble was like a curate's egg. Anywhere there was any lumpy straw spread (quite a lot of places this year) the disc won't cut through the mat. Even in the field that we Terrastared twice, then rolled, then raked (definitely a mistake as this did bring the straw back to the surface) and then drilled will be a little patchy. Our winter barley is just coming through though and is generally looking encouraging. No pellets yet, although there is a little bit of slug grazing. Plan to monitor it for the time being. We are drilling second wheats atm which is the first true zero till block. Stubble cut very high and we're going more like 10kph rather than the 13kph we had been doing. Going in OK, although it doesn't take much of a straw layer to leave seed sitting in straw rather than earth. Drilling at 2 inches deep to try and get past the straw. Personally I think baling spring barley straw if zero-tilling seems necessary.

I lost you at curate's egg

 

[Feldspar]

I lost you at curate's egg

Good in parts.