I've had years where the osr didn't grow till October, even though planted end of August.
Min till lost every bit of moisture, now with DD it's a lot more reliable to grow.
To drill OSR or not
- Thread starter Fred
- Start date
Min till lost every bit of moisture, now with DD it's a lot more reliable to grow.
- Location
- Mid Northants
Im going to reduce acreage , extend rotation , use fertilizer at seeding and companion crop
What I was trying to fathom is whether we will get even higher numbers of CSFB this autumn
- Location
- Essex/Herts Border
I think we probably will yes, reduced acreage drilled by the sounds of it, large numbers last year leading to large numbers of larvae this spring, very little frost kill over winter I would imagine. Hopefully extra food and a warmish winter might have seen an increase in beneficial insects as well.
SilliamWhale
Member
This year I drilled rape FSS at about 3kg acre with a short disc and a seeder on the back (can't get good enough germination with the 750 - barley toxins in the rain affect it). @ £16/ac. Looking back its too thick but there is plenty of times in the winter I looked at it and felt some areas were too thin - I don't want to be writing it off each year.
After that its had Propquizafop and Astrokerb in January. No fungicides and £53 acre worth of Urea and AS (ignore P and K and Lime costs as my straw sales pay for replacement FYM across all rotations so I never count straw as profit per se just as something to invest in fertility and anything else is a bonus)
I'm banking on 1.5t acre and need to get £300 ton. I feel the 1.5t/acre budget is reasonably achieveable but who knows what the season holds?
£20 acre to drill (incl fuel)
£3.50 acre royalty - seed is virtually negligible
£25 herbicides and boron
£65 N and S (incl spreading)
£20 swathing (we get a bit of wind here, its easier to swath and keeps roundup down)
Total not combined £130 acre. The only area here I'm feeling can be cut is Fert - do I use too much/can I get away with less? There is no point me budgeting on 5t/ha of OSR - it can happen but its the same likelihood as 4.5t/acre of Wheat regularly - ie usually on my soils/ climate there is an external restriction. I probably should have done some Proline but I felt flowering has been a bit variable so taking a chance here. The high investers are unlikely to get 2/t acre this year either - I don't think the sunshine is here.
I personally feel Hybrids are great for continental climates but not so convinced for me. Hybrids pretty much double your costs early on, maybe even quadruple if you feel the need to baby in the crop at establishment. I will never hit the top spot in OSR yield though! Of course its not in the shed yet either.
Generally is 1 in 6 rotation, luckily not so much flea beetle here and I ignore most of the agricultural press on OSR as well which is a massive sales machine.
After that its had Propquizafop and Astrokerb in January. No fungicides and £53 acre worth of Urea and AS (ignore P and K and Lime costs as my straw sales pay for replacement FYM across all rotations so I never count straw as profit per se just as something to invest in fertility and anything else is a bonus)
I'm banking on 1.5t acre and need to get £300 ton. I feel the 1.5t/acre budget is reasonably achieveable but who knows what the season holds?
£20 acre to drill (incl fuel)
£3.50 acre royalty - seed is virtually negligible
£25 herbicides and boron
£65 N and S (incl spreading)
£20 swathing (we get a bit of wind here, its easier to swath and keeps roundup down)
Total not combined £130 acre. The only area here I'm feeling can be cut is Fert - do I use too much/can I get away with less? There is no point me budgeting on 5t/ha of OSR - it can happen but its the same likelihood as 4.5t/acre of Wheat regularly - ie usually on my soils/ climate there is an external restriction. I probably should have done some Proline but I felt flowering has been a bit variable so taking a chance here. The high investers are unlikely to get 2/t acre this year either - I don't think the sunshine is here.
I personally feel Hybrids are great for continental climates but not so convinced for me. Hybrids pretty much double your costs early on, maybe even quadruple if you feel the need to baby in the crop at establishment. I will never hit the top spot in OSR yield though! Of course its not in the shed yet either.
Generally is 1 in 6 rotation, luckily not so much flea beetle here and I ignore most of the agricultural press on OSR as well which is a massive sales machine.
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SilliamWhale
Member
I don't know but I can tell you what. If the royalty for fss rape is £3.50 acre then the costs for a bag of conventional rape (which by the way should be coming in 25kg bags not in 3kg bags) is a rip off.
- Location
- Lincolnshire
....with seemingly less crop to nibble = more pressure. I'll let the dust settles next year.
Understatement of the year. I basically did the same as you and will be delighted with 1t/ac after intense csfb pressure.
Surely a year of high csfb and very little use of Insecticides (i don't know anyone this spring used any and i for one hardly used any last autumn) surely the predators will be sky rocketing as well. isn't this where we are heading of a re-balancing of mother nature (hold on i have an itch from my hemp under-crackers) but seriously i think we probably peaked last year........but this autumn will tell
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Late drilling helps a lot, my best crop was an after-thought drilled 15th Sept into dryish conditions. Crops pulled up around me this spring were 2nd week of august drilled, though a few early drilled one on nice land are looking really well.
That’s a nice thought
Yes, and some other merchants are doing this too. Pay half of your seed bill at delivery and the other half when you deliver the crop. If the crop fails, you've only paid half the cost of the seed. I haven't seen the details of the terms yet but would imagine that the net cost of the seed you eventually pay allows for the interest and a bit of risk premium
I think you're right. With more larvae around trashing crops taken to harvest there's bound to be more adults lurking around in August.
I've heard lots of stories about growers changing tactics. There are a number of cultural controls since it's obvious pyrethroids won't work - we selected the resistant beetles by spraying last autumn!
- Allowing osr stubbles to green up with volunteers to "hold" the CSFB adults there instead of forcing them to find a new food source by destroying their previous home. Beware of the slug issues we may get as a result of this
- Companion cropping to fool them into thinking that's not their next meal as they fly around
- Sacrificial cropping e.g. buckwheat or adding lots of home saved seed to a Clearfield mix. The mass of home saved stuff soaks up the beetles & then knock them out with the CL herbicide later on
- Increase seed rates to dilute the damage. Better to have a crop too thick than too thin
- Take more care over establishment of your crop - starter fertiliser, delay sowing or go really early, conserve more moisture by double rolling. Basically, doing everything you can to get the crop up and away as fast as possible
- Irrigate (if available)
- Top the crop in the autumn to destroy the infested petioles. It will regrow. It helps to have a crop tall enough to reach with the topper!
- Repellents - digestate, slurry, FYM, sewage cake etc. Garlic, Citronella sprays?? The manures have the added benefit of better moisture retention
- As above, encourage beneficial insects by managing field margins and stop applying insecticides unless really critical
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Is your product garlic based @Breakthru ? And how are crops treated with it last autumn looking please?
Breakthru
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders
Greenland is a mix of garlic and salicilic acid (aspirin).
Takes leatherjackets slugs and nematodes. Quite broad spectrum so will not be kind to beneficials.
Applied at end of september at Csfb egg laying timing it seems to have worked well as there are not the massive infestations of larvae being talked about elsewhere. Like all these things timing is key mixed in with weather conditions at application so you can get variations in control but very much better than doing nothing and watching your crop destroyed.
At £20/ha not going to break the bank.
Didn't see a lot of difference at higher rates >1.0l/ha but in a couple of cases a repeat application seemed better hence getting the timing at egg laying being important. Takes out the nematodes migrating to the rape.
Similar to the wheat midge problem last year do nothing and look at the resulting damage that resulted and in that case used lower rates.
think this is absolutely true. we drilled high seed rate and on lightest soils it looked good til March then withered away.
I believe we haven't seen the true extent of the damage yet this season. even good looking crops STILL have larvae burrowing around in them. there will be a lot of premature senescence and lodging as crops rot from the inside nearer harvest.
going forward, I am seriously considering changing rotation from predominately WW1/WOR(80%)&otherbreaks(20%) to WW/WBARorWW2/Break. with the break acreage split between Beans, OSR and Clover fallow. this would see our OSR acreage fall by 80%
- Location
- Berkshire
I've been trying to reduce my reliance on insecticides and take some cost and risk out of Osr growing for some time, I've used some black hss since 2014, tried mustard and Clearfield in 2016 and used sludge or more recently chicken muck.
Back in 2017 we were hit with some large storms before harvest and suffered some brackling in the spring barley, we had a wet cool September and my Osr was all September sown after the main Csfb migration and grew fantastically well with no insecticide, what was noticeable was that where the volunteer barley was thickest there was virtually nil Csfb damage...
Fast forward to 2018 and it all went wrong!! I decided to get some new Conventional seed to change varieties, drilled in September just before some predicted rain that didn't come to much and the Osr sat struggling in the dry and the late Csfb onslaught.
The first reinforcement of what I'd seen previously is that the crops that survived were the Chicken muck treated ones, the rest had DAP spread in front of the drill and they never got going, it was too dry and the N and P wasn't available.
First rule for '19 - apply Chicken muck and Sludge
Secondly my Campus looks far better than the Flamingo, it had more vigour and has grown away for the Larvae damage far better
Second rule for '19 - hss untreated Campus at high seed rates
The chalk banks were hit hardest, is that because the plants are struggling to find locked up P or because the Csfb can find it easier against the pale surface, I think the latter which leads me too...
Third rule for '19 - is to plant a companion crop, but what??
Going back to '17s experience I thought I'd have a try with some spring Rape to replace some failed Flamingo.
I drilled 190 s/m2 of Propino from the heap into the sprayed off Osr
4 weeks later the Barley had 4 leaves on it and after Easter I spread some urea on and drilled in 100 s/m2 of Ability
The barley looked well knocked by my Sprinter drill But was still well rooted, within a few days it was back up in row
The Osr is now coming up and the next week will give me an idea if the technique is worth pursuing this autumn, who knows!!!
Worth a punt, and potentially a better approach than I was advised by a distributor Agronomist recently that a mix of Biscaya and Hallmark was the answer
I'm aware this maybe a flop, but relying on a can is not the answer and we need to try some cultural controls or walk away from the crop.
Back in 2017 we were hit with some large storms before harvest and suffered some brackling in the spring barley, we had a wet cool September and my Osr was all September sown after the main Csfb migration and grew fantastically well with no insecticide, what was noticeable was that where the volunteer barley was thickest there was virtually nil Csfb damage...
Fast forward to 2018 and it all went wrong!! I decided to get some new Conventional seed to change varieties, drilled in September just before some predicted rain that didn't come to much and the Osr sat struggling in the dry and the late Csfb onslaught.
The first reinforcement of what I'd seen previously is that the crops that survived were the Chicken muck treated ones, the rest had DAP spread in front of the drill and they never got going, it was too dry and the N and P wasn't available.
First rule for '19 - apply Chicken muck and Sludge
Secondly my Campus looks far better than the Flamingo, it had more vigour and has grown away for the Larvae damage far better
Second rule for '19 - hss untreated Campus at high seed rates
The chalk banks were hit hardest, is that because the plants are struggling to find locked up P or because the Csfb can find it easier against the pale surface, I think the latter which leads me too...
Third rule for '19 - is to plant a companion crop, but what??
Going back to '17s experience I thought I'd have a try with some spring Rape to replace some failed Flamingo.
I drilled 190 s/m2 of Propino from the heap into the sprayed off Osr
4 weeks later the Barley had 4 leaves on it and after Easter I spread some urea on and drilled in 100 s/m2 of Ability
The barley looked well knocked by my Sprinter drill But was still well rooted, within a few days it was back up in row
The Osr is now coming up and the next week will give me an idea if the technique is worth pursuing this autumn, who knows!!!
Worth a punt, and potentially a better approach than I was advised by a distributor Agronomist recently that a mix of Biscaya and Hallmark was the answer
I'm aware this maybe a flop, but relying on a can is not the answer and we need to try some cultural controls or walk away from the crop.
SilliamWhale
Member
- Allowing osr stubbles to green up with volunteers to "hold" the CSFB adults there instead of forcing them to find a new food source by destroying their previous home. Beware of the slug issues we may get as a result of this
Slugs aren't generally too bad but I did bale OSR last year but this year is Astrokerbed.