The Two Simon's Theory

franklin

New Member
They are most likely fussy about everything else too- I'm not suggesting it's just the lime putting everything right, but certainly a higher than necessary pH is doing them no harm. I have grass growers that want pH values up at 7 too, and they can grow some serious grass, I can tell you.

£200/ac+ FBTs, fancy new drills, SDHIs perhaps leaves no £££ for say a tenner a year in the pot for rotational liming. False economy.

The view that land over 7 ph needs no lime is I think quite wrong. What is the calcium offtake of a crop of wheat? Lime is fertiliser too - if I can spend £££ on molybdenum, I can afford some lime.

I know I am not a big DD'er (yet), but I am liming my high pH clays, and will certainly be taking the straw off before the rape this year. And if conditions don't allow, I just wont be drilling - all thoughts of rotations and having a shedful of seed can go to hell if it pours down again. Wet clay is bad. We chopped straw is bad. Putting a little seed in wet clay and wet straw? No thanks.
 
Very interesting ideas and to take it further I think it should be examined from a more natural angle. Why does this happen when on the face of it it is a totally counter evolutionary phenomenon (triple word scores there!), consider, the more sucesseful an annual grass becomes the more likely it is to commit suicide as the seeds are to be poisoned by the parents decay.

To make any progress short term I think we must look at the mechanisms in the natural world to overcome this. If we look at damp permanent pastures the most sucessful grasses are the small fine grasses which are perrenial so this is one mechanism to overcome the acidic conditions. No help there then so perhaps we should look at what happens to annual grasses in the wild. The plant produces seed and will shed it or spread it to the surrounding area, the plant will then senesce but will usually remain standing for a long time dead. This is very sensible as it provides a protective canopy over the seedlings with a beneficial microclimate, any root exudates will act as a natural herbicide as plants are immune to there own protection system or that would be a quicker way to suicide.

So I believe the problem is twofold. One man has intervened and produced an unnatural situation wherby there is a huge increase in the amount of straw produced and secondly in the change to no till we are still looking at the wrong end of the telescope and have not moved on to a whole system.

I would think most people went to no till from min till where the holy mantra was always success comes only come from THE FINEST EVEN CHOP to aid straw breakdown. Thats true and when mixed with soil the problem is diluted but when left on top we get the poison problem we can see.

What can be done? Well lets be controvertial and suggest where not baling we get rid of our wonderful micro choppers and look in the hedge for the straw spreaders of the glory days of burning. Spread the straw use a row cleaner on a wide spaced drill this would help weed control and allow the crop to get away. There is a better solution though which I think is to use a stripper header and leave the straw where nature intended. If following with rape use an autocast. If the crop residue is left standing it will rett slowly and as this is an aerobic degradation will not produce the toxins, come spring drill straight through with sharp discs and I am sure a lot of the problems will be reduced.

This only goes to show that the Brussels bureaucrats are way ahead of us and only think of ways to help solve our problems for us as is shown by the introduction of the three crop rule!!! You can only solve this problem by increasing your chemistry set or improving your rotation.
 

Fred

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Mid Northants
Very interesting ideas and to take it further I think it should be examined from a more natural angle. Why does this happen when on the face of it it is a totally counter evolutionary phenomenon (triple word scores there!), consider, the more sucesseful an annual grass becomes the more likely it is to commit suicide as the seeds are to be poisoned by the parents decay.

To make any progress short term I think we must look at the mechanisms in the natural world to overcome this. If we look at damp permanent pastures the most sucessful grasses are the small fine grasses which are perrenial so this is one mechanism to overcome the acidic conditions. No help there then so perhaps we should look at what happens to annual grasses in the wild. The plant produces seed and will shed it or spread it to the surrounding area, the plant will then senesce but will usually remain standing for a long time dead. This is very sensible as it provides a protective canopy over the seedlings with a beneficial microclimate, any root exudates will act as a natural herbicide as plants are immune to there own protection system or that would be a quicker way to suicide.

So I believe the problem is twofold. One man has intervened and produced an unnatural situation wherby there is a huge increase in the amount of straw produced and secondly in the change to no till we are still looking at the wrong end of the telescope and have not moved on to a whole system.

I would think most people went to no till from min till where the holy mantra was always success comes only come from THE FINEST EVEN CHOP to aid straw breakdown. Thats true and when mixed with soil the problem is diluted but when left on top we get the poison problem we can see.

What can be done? Well lets be controvertial and suggest where not baling we get rid of our wonderful micro choppers and look in the hedge for the straw spreaders of the glory days of burning. Spread the straw use a row cleaner on a wide spaced drill this would help weed control and allow the crop to get away. There is a better solution though which I think is to use a stripper header and leave the straw where nature intended. If following with rape use an autocast. If the crop residue is left standing it will rett slowly and as this is an aerobic degradation will not produce the toxins, come spring drill straight through with sharp discs and I am sure a lot of the problems will be reduced.

This only goes to show that the Brussels bureaucrats are way ahead of us and only think of ways to help solve our problems for us as is shown by the introduction of the three crop rule!!! You can only solve this problem by increasing your chemistry set or improving your rotation.
]

On the forum that We dare not speak its name,I had a thread running that was called natures string vest

On which I had some photos of long straw that had been subsoiler drilled into with osr and the consequent growth was stronger and better.

As you rightly say weve been hard wired into chopping finely to allow for min till
 

Simon C

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Essex Coast
The best covers I have ever grown have all been disc drilled into stripped or very high cut stubbles. If I was going to grow rape again, this is how I would establish it because the anaerobic bacteria would not be able to get at it.

With these covers, the problem came in the Spring, where the action of drilling and rolling the cash crop put all the straw down on the ground. When it was wet afterwords, the acids produced then effected germination and vigour, to the point that last year I had a total failure with a field of lucerne. (ouch, very expensive seed). Being very small seeds, they were drilled as shallow as possible, right close to the acid layer. Had I drilled beans of peas that go in much deeper, they might have been OK.

Thought I would try something different this year, I flailed a cover in November that had been tine drilled into chopped straw. I wanted to get rid of everything before the Spring so the soil could dry quicker, which worked really well, and also I thought the mulch of green vegetation mixed with straw would provide a much better, more balanced diet for the worms. Trouble was the worms preferred the high nitrogen mulch and didn't touch the straw which was all still there at drilling time. It is interesting to see that all this straw is covered in fusarium which I have never seen before. We have always thought that worms clean up stubble born fusarium because it is their only source of protein, so I suppose this proves it, but they prefer green material if it's available.
 
I have a field where I terminated my cover in early march as the grass weeds were getting away, after about 2 weeks I incorporated the material into the top inch,I then broadcast clover and phacelia and rolled it in, conditions were decent at the time.
Since then it has rained quite a bit but it has been warm with it, everything else has grown like crazy but nothing has germinated on those plots until this week when the grass weeds are beginning to return, I hate broadcasting and had blamed it on that, maybe it was maybe it wasn't, but the interesting coincidence is I have a soil test for the field from this spring, as I recall ac saturation was 89percent, cec was about 24, available ca was about 3500ppm total ca was into tonnes per acre, ph of 7.3.
If ever there was afield with an acid buffer that's it.

I have also seen stripes in spring barley where volunteer wheat was terminated only a week or so before, not in dd, sumo trio, ph then combi drill, the soil will be similar to the one above.

I have some interest in researching the problem as I have some maize to dd into the terminated cover crops and into some currently still standing rye grass, if the theory is accurate the maize in the rye grass is doomed.

I would like to ask what people think would be good to try, I will be working with a tine drill if it ever dries up enough and I'm putting a liquid blend in the seed furrow so if we wanted to add a little hydrated lime to the mix that would be possible, it will also be inoculated in the row with bacillus species, myco fungi and all sort of other stuff. If you would like to know ph I the seed trench etc etc we can do that, I would be more interested to send a sample somewhere to find out what nasties are in itso we could be more targeted in our attack.

As a mixed farmer dd ing into grass is a big deal to me so I'd like to do what I can to help
 
I think there may be a danger in getting too carried away with just acid degradation products. these obviously play a major role but there are bound to be other pathogens at work so beware of thinking its just a neutralisation job.
One other thing that may or may not be relevant. A few years ago I had a bit of couch in a field of wheat. I did a pre harvest round up on the patch and it did an excellent job. The crop was cut and straw baled and stubble left over winter. The patch that I roundupped was golden coloured for months whereas the rest of the field did the normal dull blackish look. The chemical obviously prevented some organism working there.
 

Simon Chiles

DD Moderator
The following text is lifted from the user guide for the new Moore direct drill for grassland. It seems like Sam Moore has some useful knowledge on the subject and that may be lime is only a partial solution?
Method 6 Older leys, rough permanent grass or old worn out pastures
These need to be approached with care. Although Glyphosate deactivates in contact with soil, there is a problem with toxic phenol and acetic acids being
released by old decaying sprayed off vegetation, so if there is a thick mat or subsurface mat of roots and fibre, and inevitably the seed is placed near this mat,
then germination problems can occur due to localised acidic soil. This is worse in wet anaerobic conditions, before during or after seeding.
The problem with direct drilling into sprayed off grass or anything else that has a large root mat is that it is always a big gamble depending on the weather,
especially after you have drilled, which is why some people say it's successful and others don't. An analogy is that silage (decaying grass) made in wet
conditions is always more acidic when opened.
In a heavy mat situation, waiting for long enough for all the plants to die completely after spraying is the only way to guarantee success with direct drilling on
old matted pastures, otherwise you need to either shallow cultivate and roll, to increase the oxygen levels or if you're feeling lucky take a gamble, that the
sward wont lie wet after drilling. If you had a thick mat of decaying vegetation and spun bean seeds on the surface and then ploughed them in, you would get
the same results. So either spray off in spring and drill in autumn, after a lime application, and probably another lower rate spray, pre drilling, or less
production can be lost by spraying off in autumn, applying lime, and drilling in early spring, when a further lower rate spray is usually necessary.
In a lower more marginal mat situation, the application of quick acting bagged lime alone can help neutralize the effects of the acidic decomposition, but like all
seeding techniques depend on moisture and ground heat. Get the bagged lime on a few weeks before planned drilling date, even if the ph in the field is ok.
In this situation, we recommend the delayed glyphosate application techniques discussed above, that is to delay glyphosate application until after seeds have
been planted, but before they germinate, so that the seeds get maximum exposure to germination, establishment, and deeper rooting before the acidic effects
of the decaying plant material come to bear.
A few test sites dug with a spade, will help you decide on the subsurface mat/thatch problems that might be present.
Direct drilling after sprayed off temporary or more open leys isn't usually a problem as the root matt isn't big enough to damage seedings with its acids and
phenols.
In all the above cases use a vigorous quick establishing grass seed mixture up to 35kg/ha.
There is no doubt that a blend of 50% perennial Hybrid Tet, 25% Intermediate tet and 25% diploid works best. These are mostly larger seeds with greater
energy reserves for coping with adverse situations. Italian ryegrass swards can easily be re-established at the end of their allotted production cycle, by re-drilling
typically after the third season.

I wonder where he got this idea?
 

Simon Chiles

DD Moderator
I think there may be a danger in getting too carried away with just acid degradation products. these obviously play a major role but there are bound to be other pathogens at work so beware of thinking its just a neutralisation job.
One other thing that may or may not be relevant. A few years ago I had a bit of couch in a field of wheat. I did a pre harvest round up on the patch and it did an excellent job. The crop was cut and straw baled and stubble left over winter. The patch that I roundupped was golden coloured for months whereas the rest of the field did the normal dull blackish look. The chemical obviously prevented some organism working there.

You're getting phytotoxins mixed up with allopathy, the two are not the same.
If you re read the the OP I said the phytotoxins make the seedlings susceptible to fungal attack, logic and my trials suggest that if you neutralise the acids then as a result you make the seedlings more resistant to fungal attack.
 
You're getting phytotoxins mixed up with allopathy, the two are not the same.
If you re read the the OP I said the phytotoxins make the seedlings susceptible to fungal attack, logic and my trials suggest that if you neutralise the acids then as a result you make the seedlings more resistant to fungal attack.
I can see that but this is a clever way to tackle the result not the problem, the problem is the mat. Does the mat have to be there? the conditions are only anearobic when the mat is wet and lies on the soil, the coarser the chop (or unchopped) the less likely it is to do this. Also when it is wet the mat prevents the wind/sun from drying the soil quickly so keeps the the vicious circle.
I think the prilled lime is a good idea and would have used it last year but for the weather, I will definitely use it this year as I have 20 tonne in the shed!!!
I am a no till newby but this year I have learned the hard way and I think that we are too linked up to system farming like ABC and dont think of individual fields properly. The crop is combined and chopped/baled a spray of roundup and in with the drill. With no till the whole of the cultivation is to be done by worms and roots so it is slow to respond to unusual events such as the last winter. I can only speak for my land but the only way I can see of continuing is to have 50% WW and 50% spring crops. The WW fields will be very lightly cultivated post harvest and left, this hopefully will give a more open surface and prevent a solid mat forming. Any cereals before another cereal will be baled.
To be quite honest I am too old to think 15yrs ahead and I understand it is a long game with no till but the one thing I have learned in this game that the only long term way here is rotation, rotation, rotation.
 

Knockie

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
Just a thought with regards crop residue, now that we have no livestock of our own on the farm straw isn't that important to us, although we still do straw for muck deals.
As arable farmers should we not be looking at ways to reduce crop residues after all it's the grain we are after not the straw.
Ok, it's only year two with the CULTAN but I'm noticing greatly reduced stem growth in wheat and barley with very short crops indeed. I'm sure that Nitrate fed crops are forced into growing upwards..... for any benefit? In nature plants want to use mostly Ammonium N not Nitrate , could the composition of the residue change depending on nutrition/chemicals used?
Cheers.
SD.
 
Just a thought with regards crop residue, now that we have no livestock of our own on the farm straw isn't that important to us, although we still do straw for muck deals.
As arable farmers should we not be looking at ways to reduce crop residues after all it's the grain we are after not the straw.
Ok, it's only year two with the CULTAN but I'm noticing greatly reduced stem growth in wheat and barley with very short crops indeed. I'm sure that Nitrate fed crops are forced into growing upwards..... for any benefit? In nature plants want to use mostly Ammonium N not Nitrate , could the composition of the residue change depending on nutrition/chemicals used?
Cheers.
SD.

Do the crops look a different shade of green when compared to other conventionally fertilised crops?
 

Andy Howard

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Ashford, Kent
Just a thought with regards crop residue, now that we have no livestock of our own on the farm straw isn't that important to us, although we still do straw for muck deals.
As arable farmers should we not be looking at ways to reduce crop residues after all it's the grain we are after not the straw.
Ok, it's only year two with the CULTAN but I'm noticing greatly reduced stem growth in wheat and barley with very short crops indeed. I'm sure that Nitrate fed crops are forced into growing upwards..... for any benefit? In nature plants want to use mostly Ammonium N not Nitrate , could the composition of the residue change depending on nutrition/chemicals used?
Cheers.
SD.
I have been thinking the same with our crops as we only use urea no AN. They do seem short. I have nothing to compare it to though as contracting customers who use AN are a different variety and it also had paper sludge.
 

Gilchro

Member
Location
Tayside
When you are talking of the mat, surely a longer length to the residue would reduce this problem. When you make silage, the drier it is, the shorter you make it, to ensure you exclude the air and drive anaerobic fermentation.
Would it not then be the case that the reverse should also be true.

Would that mean that between a longer stubble and non chopped, spread straw, this should reduce the issue?

To my mind, swapping to using a straw spreader and no longer chopping would be a solution but could you fling lightweight straw 20 ft either side of the combine?
 

lexion610

Member
Location
Somerset
When you are talking of the mat, surely a longer length to the residue would reduce this problem. When you make silage, the drier it is, the shorter you make it, to ensure you exclude the air and drive anaerobic fermentation.
Would it not then be the case that the reverse should also be true.

Would that mean that between a longer stubble and non chopped, spread straw, this should reduce the issue?

To my mind, swapping to using a straw spreader and no longer chopping would be a solution but could you fling lightweight straw 20 ft either side of the combine?
I'm considering taking half the knives out of the chopper this year..
The longer bits of straw should, if anything, travel further as they would have more momentum than the small particles of chopped straw.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
A bit more circumstancial eveidence

2 fields of wheat on a block of land with same rotation for at least 20 years drilled same day same seed, same seed rate and same operator even and treated identically since drilling

solitice following spring oats, straw chopped both had no cultivation

first field drilled with 750a, could find evidence of hair-pining on the day second field drilled with Dale

the Dale field is much thicker and plants are taller, no thin or bare patches

750a field is fine but notably thinner and plants smaller in areas where straw has overlapped (headland meets middle) there are some bare areas still with a thick straw mat present

fits this theory nicely, ie the tine of the Dale has row cleaned where as the disc drills hair pining in this case was detrimental
 

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