Spring barley variety?

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
Does anyone have any theories about which Spring Barley variety likes no-till the best? We've grown Tipple and Propino before and neither of them had much go in them, the roots never really got going and the yield was always disappointing.

We've got to get some new seed this year, if we're to grow any at all, as I let the bit I was keeping back for seed heat up in the shed and turn into feed barley...anyway, any thoughts? Not sure there's that much available out there, but that is a dreary detail.
 

Simon C

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Essex Coast
John, I thought the same as you when I grew Propino in the past, never very exiting. Tried Irina last year to undersow my rye grass in, much happier how it grew, 2.5 t/acre, which wasn't bad considering the dry Spring we had. Malsters not so keen on it , but they did take it.
 
We've only drilled spring crops a couple of years using no-till, earlier we did shallow min-till. Varieties for malting barley are largely the same as yours. Irina has done well with both methods. In 2015 we had a very wet spring and only ran a Carrier twice before drilling with a Rapid. It looked aweful in some places but was a record crop of 8.800 kg/ha dried. 2016 we started trailing no-till without cover crops and we had the driest and hottest spring in memory. It still managed about 6.500 kg/ha, on some fairly light land. 2017 we no-tilled Irina following for the first time a cover crop and yielded 7.500 kg/ha. I thought it would do better, but a smaller field which hasn't had much love historically dragged it down a bit.

It will be a test of the system to no-till this year after the exceptionally wet winter and some generally poor cover crops.
I do think, looking back and comparing with others, that a disc coulter system has been better for spring crops generally. Might not be the case this year though.

We always place fertilizer down with the seed, which is pretty much by default regardless of establishing method in Sweden. NPK and anything from 60 to 90 kg N unless you have manure in your rotation of course.
 

SimonD

Member
Location
Dorset
The variety drilled at the right time?

Not a flippant reply but I’ve had some poor SB and that was absolutely down to the drilling and time of. Is a variety more suited to a particular method of establishment?
 

juke

Member
Location
DURHAM
We had a 750 on demo last year and grew 20 acres of sienna it did 3 ton sown @420 seeds, dunno if it was good luck or what but it seemed to like the no till environment after cover crop.
 

Simon Chiles

DD Moderator
The variety drilled at the right time?

Not a flippant reply but I’ve had some poor SB and that was absolutely down to the drilling and time of. Is a variety more suited to a particular method of establishment?

I think this is the answer, we’ve had spring barley yield well sown in mid May. It’s a balancing act between going in in ideal conditions ( and having the b*lls to wait for them ) and the soil conditions for it to get away quickly. The difficult bit is that often the weather after sowing also makes a big difference and without a crystal ball it’s just a wild guess. Soil type also plays a part but fortunately the lighter ground that you can sensibly drill earlier on is the ground that you’d need to drill earlier because you’d be worried about it drying out. I think that people in the first years of no till still think about ideal drilling time as they would if they were cultivating forgetting that cultivated soil loses moisture the equivalent of 50mm of rain.
 

Simon C

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Essex Coast
I think this is the answer, we’ve had spring barley yield well sown in mid May. It’s a balancing act between going in in ideal conditions ( and having the b*lls to wait for them ) and the soil conditions for it to get away quickly. The difficult bit is that often the weather after sowing also makes a big difference and without a crystal ball it’s just a wild guess. Soil type also plays a part but fortunately the lighter ground that you can sensibly drill earlier on is the ground that you’d need to drill earlier because you’d be worried about it drying out. I think that people in the first years of no till still think about ideal drilling time as they would if they were cultivating forgetting that cultivated soil loses moisture the equivalent of 50mm of rain.

Only problem I have with this theory is that later drilling is reducing the amount of days a crop has to grow. Drilling in May rather than March doesn't result in the harvest being two months later. With peas I found that they just don't have time to grow as many pods, only 3 instead of 5 on an early drilled crop. Also with cereals, they don't have time to grow as may tillers, but that just confirms the rule that the later you sow, the higher the seed rate should be.
 

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
We've tried drilling barley in Feb, March, April, high seed rates and low, it usually disappoints. Sir Silliam had a theory that spring barley wasn't suited to dd farming, but then he suddenly found he could make it work. The last couple of years we've thought we were so clever leaving it very late...even with Simon's extra 50mm, the long cold droughts of spring resulted in poor yields. And when you tug the plants out, their roots are weedy. Hence this thread...are there varieties out there that get away in the relatively tighter soil under no-till?
 

Simon Chiles

DD Moderator
Only problem I have with this theory is that later drilling is reducing the amount of days a crop has to grow. Drilling in May rather than March doesn't result in the harvest being two months later. With peas I found that they just don't have time to grow as many pods, only 3 instead of 5 on an early drilled crop. Also with cereals, they don't have time to grow as may tillers, but that just confirms the rule that the later you sow, the higher the seed rate should be.

If you’re ordering seed how do you know when you’re going to plant it and what seed rate you might need?
I wouldn’t increase the seed rate but always hit spring cereals with early N and early and hard PGR. In drier conditions I find that no till cereals can ( if you haven’t forced them to tiller ) throw up late tillers resulting in very uneven crop ripening. I suspect that the deeper root system of the no till allows it to reach just enough moisture that throws the plant into reproductive survival mode in contrast to cultivated crops whose shallower roots mean that they go into natural ( or unnatural ) senescence.
 
Interesting question. We have Propino carried over from last year's crop. Our spring barley has probably been one of the biggest disappointments in lower cultivation systems. The yield results from NIAB and Agrii's Stow Longa trials give quite an indication that spring barley just doesn't like being no-tilled that much, whereas spring oats seem to be much happier. There was a visually very impressive side-by-side plot of no-till spring oats and spring barley two years ago when conditions were tough. Oats looked so much happier than the spring barley which really showed up any compaction. As a result we are trying spring oats for the first time ever this year, although still have some spring barley to go in.
 

Simon Chiles

DD Moderator
Interesting question. We have Propino carried over from last year's crop. Our spring barley has probably been one of the biggest disappointments in lower cultivation systems. The yield results from NIAB and Agrii's Stow Longa trials give quite an indication that spring barley just doesn't like being no-tilled that much, whereas spring oats seem to be much happier. There was a visually very impressive side-by-side plot of no-till spring oats and spring barley two years ago when conditions were tough. Oats looked so much happier than the spring barley which really showed up any compaction. As a result we are trying spring oats for the first time ever this year, although still have some spring barley to go in.

You’ll still need to do the PGR with the oats, one year the contractor who sprayed mine at the time left the PGR out, I can assure you that just shaving the heads off ( because the straw was so green ) oats at 26% moisture and in late September isn’t much fun.
As a rough guide in decent growing conditions I reckon spring crops need 100 days between planting and harvesting.
 

Simon Chiles

DD Moderator
Interesting question. We have Propino carried over from last year's crop. Our spring barley has probably been one of the biggest disappointments in lower cultivation systems. The yield results from NIAB and Agrii's Stow Longa trials give quite an indication that spring barley just doesn't like being no-tilled that much, whereas spring oats seem to be much happier. There was a visually very impressive side-by-side plot of no-till spring oats and spring barley two years ago when conditions were tough. Oats looked so much happier than the spring barley which really showed up any compaction. As a result we are trying spring oats for the first time ever this year, although still have some spring barley to go in.

BTW were these trials done on land that has been no tilled for years and planted ( and grown ) by someone experienced in no till or were they just slapped into the ground and treated the same as you would a cultivated crop? There’s a big difference in approach’s in my opinion.
 
BTW were these trials done on land that has been no tilled for years and planted ( and grown ) by someone experienced in no till or were they just slapped into the ground and treated the same as you would a cultivated crop? There’s a big difference in approach’s in my opinion.

The latter, but it showed an important difference in resilience nonetheless IMO.
 

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
If you’re ordering seed how do you know when you’re going to plant it and what seed rate you might need?
I wouldn’t increase the seed rate but always hit spring cereals with early N and early and hard PGR. In drier conditions I find that no till cereals can ( if you haven’t forced them to tiller ) throw up late tillers resulting in very uneven crop ripening. I suspect that the deeper root system of the no till allows it to reach just enough moisture that throws the plant into reproductive survival mode in contrast to cultivated crops whose shallower roots mean that they go into natural ( or unnatural ) senescence.
Scared to hit spring barley hard with PGR it has so little time to recover from any knocks. Also mine is always short in anyway. What do you use moddus? To the OfP I am very disappointed with Propino (finding it a bit gutless in a conventional system), but I did find Tipple to be better, just lack of maltster demand that stopped me growing it.
 

Shutesy

Moderator
Arable Farmer
We have switched to KWS Irena for this year, Propino just didn't seem to do the business on this farm. We are also putting 14-7-7 liquid fert @200l/ha down each leg of our DTS this Spring. Spring crops always used to be sown with fert down the spout at the same time so i'm just putting a modern twist on it. Never been a fan of the spring crops first dose of fert being when the tramlines are just visible, feels a bit late.
 

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