Sugar beet in dd

Fat hen

Member
Ive let a neighbour loose growing fodder beet on some lightish land (some clay patches). Due to be lifted in Nov by a beet contractor. Been no till since 2014-5.

I am not looking fwd to the aftermath once its been lifted, want to get some WW in there, if it dries up in Dec or Jan. I have a LD flatlift, short discs & a 750a to my name
....any suggestions ? How have others handled sugar beet? Resorted to the p word??
 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
Ive let a neighbour loose growing fodder beet on some lightish land (some clay patches). Due to be lifted in Nov by a beet contractor. Been no till since 2014-5.

I am not looking fwd to the aftermath once its been lifted, want to get some WW in there, if it dries up in Dec or Jan. I have a LD flatlift, short discs & a 750a to my name
....any suggestions ? How have others handled sugar beet? Resorted to the p word??
We found strip tilling maize into beet ground did not work, capped very badly so needed ploughing. Now we are all zero till/strip till have replaced energy beet with lucerne.
 

Ruston3w

Member
Location
south suffolk
Not much help now but did you plough for the beet? Not saying it would be the same for you but we find the less we do before beet the shallower the damage and the less we need to do after....I would doubt it will be dry enough to subsoil in time for WW if it was ploughed.
 

Fat hen

Member
Not much help now but did you plough for the beet? Not saying it would be the same for you but we find the less we do before beet the shallower the damage and the less we need to do after....I would doubt it will be dry enough to subsoil in time for WW if it was ploughed.
Not ploughed. He got a contractor to apply slurry with drag tines to 5" or so, then LD flatlifted it.
 

Daniel

Member

Quick search came up with this, thats not his I don't think, he had a 6m.

That's me! That was a demo Claydon, bought one the following spring.

It's a pretty kind field that one, we have some with more clay content that you couldn't generally do that in.

I don't often follow direct, we often have a lot of tops in the fen (not this year) and it depends whether the harvester can mulch the tops or just spins them out the side of the topper as to whether you can get away with it.

Also headlands and the tracks the trailer make want pulling up and sometimes when you send someone off to the field to pull it up, it's just easier for them to do the lot.

But yes, it can be done.
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
2014. 100t/ha. The drought ended the week before lifting started. This was the good bit. Looked awful. Lots of trailers. We used a very, very cruel looking c-tyne drag twice over then used a miniflow on a crawler. Drilled mid December. Mix of tilth and raw clay. All grew. No records, but crop in.

Always nice to see beet up on the heath and crop going in straight behind. But you do what you need to do to get the crop in.
 

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DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Sheep, Paraplow, Power harrow to level, Unidrill. Worked a treat, in January 2018, dry winter, yielded 4t/acre Crispin on light land. Maybe not quite zero till, but we didnt resort to the plough and I think it was the better for it. (Firmer, no new weed seed brought up etc).
 

alomy75

Member
I don’t even attempt getting w wheat in after beet; pigtail if you can now or wait till spring; toptilth and drill as soon as you can travel; follow the moisture down. Always amazes me how well it looks. Anything too deep will cause more harm than good when the soil is wet imo. I do plough for the beet beforehand though...
 

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
I don’t even attempt getting w wheat in after beet; pigtail if you can now or wait till spring; toptilth and drill as soon as you can travel; follow the moisture down. Always amazes me how well it looks. Anything too deep will cause more harm than good when the soil is wet imo. I do plough for the beet beforehand though...
I find in a wet autumn the driest place is after sugar beet and can drill there rather than min tilled stuff got ready earlier.
 

alomy75

Member
I find in a wet autumn the driest place is after sugar beet and can drill there rather than min tilled stuff got ready earlier.
I would agree-beet takes out a lot of moisture (as it’s mostly water anyway!) I struggle with headlands and where the trailer has been commuting to the heap. In the field the harvester itself leaves a nice level finish but one decent rain this time of year on that or if I did manage to cultivate signals game over for me. Last year was pretty unusual though; it’s raining here now and the harvester left this morning so I guess I had a couple of hours where I ‘could’ have drilled it 😂 I do like spring wheat after beet; plus gives another shot at the blackgrass
 

Fat hen

Member
After much deliberation I ditched flatlifting. Borrowed a neighbours Vader rapid fires with a Rapidlift toolbar. Hopefully loosened the wheelings sufficiently. Not through yet
 

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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“

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