Strip till Maize

Scott F

New Member
Hi
I'm thinking of strip tilling maize this year with are mzuri drill some of it will be into grass that's been cut and some into stubble. Any advice or tips would be helpful? Thanks
 

Andy12345

Member
Location
Somerset
Hi
I'm thinking of strip tilling maize this year with are mzuri drill some of it will be into grass that's been cut and some into stubble. Any advice or tips would be helpful? Thanks

We trialed ( I say we ,mean where I work) it was an absolute disaster compared to the normal plough cultivate drill scenario.
 

HarryB97

Member
Mixed Farmer
Used a Claydon Hybrid to compare against a one pass cultivator, power harrow then precision drill. Not sure what the yield difference was as it was drilled for a neighbour but the plants looked near enough identical apart from the narrower row spacing.
 

Dave b

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Somerset
I did mine last year and it was great. Just drop the coulter pressure to 50-60 and no faster than 10k. Set gps at 3.33m if you’re on a 3m drill. Don’t drill too early
 

Scott F

New Member
@Scott F did you end up strip tilling your maize? How did it go? Yield difference?
Was a learning curve! Some did really well and some was patchy, had issues with fert blocking in pipes which I found later was a lump in the distribution head blocking holes.
Did some into over wintered stubble on a new block of ground which had baked before we drilled it so was slow to start but ended up being a good crop, did some into Italian rye grass which had been cut then sprayed off but had issues with grass regrowing so think I will spray off after drilling this time to give it longer to regrow. This was the worst yielding fields but I dont think the drills fault.
Only other issue I had was into ley ground I found the single shoot coulters left a fair slot which the press wheel struggled to close I was on the wide press wheels so dont know if narrow would of been better or to use the double shoot coulter for grass ground?
Hoping to do all my maize this year with it into a mixture of cover crops/grass leys/stubbles
 

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
why drill the headlands at all...?

strip and direct drill all you like but it wont warm the soil up any faster in the spring and it wont stop the potential damage and mess of a late harvested crop in what is a quite often a wet time of year.
 

Tompkins

Member
Location
NE Somerset
A few years back we had a block of land going into maize after stubble turnips. Ploughed it all except one field that the sheep were still grazing. We were then left with 2 foot stalks in that field and the rest had been drilled with a precision drill so we were keen to get it done. In the end we drilled the maize with a Claydon Hybrid using the 3 inch spoon and single outlet, rolled it and spun on the DAP which should have gone in with the seed on the maize drill. It was a late wet maize harvest that year and not only did the field travel better, the difference in the crops was not enough to notice.

I'm not saying that it's necessarily the best way to put maize in but done in the right conditions it's definitely an option.
 

Tompkins

Member
Location
NE Somerset
Also drilled some maize into an old sprayed off grass ley late one year, slots were a bit open but customer then plastered it with slurry and they were happy with the crop considering they didn't have the cost of ploughing etc.
 
Claydon hybrid did my maize covers last year, pig slurry first and then drill, down every spout . It all got to 8-9ft tall held a lot of birds and they want the same this year.
Family shoot and we did have to count up the kids after the drive to make sure we hadn't left any in there.?.
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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