Vetch companion

[clbarclay]

Hello

Has anyone tried planting Winter OSR in the spring?

After a limited success of turing 20kg of vetch into about 300 last year, I'm intending to have another go on a slightly larger area this spring. It was planted on its own though and the biggest challenge was getting it over the combine knife.

Comments on here make OSR sound like one of the better companions for keeping vetch up and I have a few bags of left over seed.

I'm not expecting the OSR to produce any seed, but will it get to stem extension and branching if planted late or just stay low and leafy?

 

[EddieB]

It might work, I tried growing some vetch to combine but ended up discing it in. As you say, pretty much impossible to get the combine header under it.

 

[martian]

Mustard might work better, the seed is cheap enough and it should hold the vetch up nicely. Walking our rape this afternoon it looks like the frost took some of our vetch companions got taken out by the hard frost, although the berseem clover looks well enough; I'd have expected it to be less frost tolerant than the vetch. Might have to set the cleaner for separating rape from clover seed rather than vetch from rapeseed post harvest...

 

[clbarclay]

Travelling one way, the lifters were getting under it okayish, but I probably should have reversed back up the field to cut the second half in the same directions.

Getting some mustard sounds reasonable and probably try a bit with the OSR too.

Getting clover out of rapeseed sounds tricky?

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Reckon mustard would be more reliable than rape. It's also over £1 a kilo to buy so getting some in the tank wouldn't be a disaster

 

[martian]

Getting clover out of rapeseed sounds tricky?

Probably too tricky. We had some last year, the berseem grew up as high as the rape and I could see the seed in the gubbins that came off the tiny sieve at the bottom, but there was too much dust and bits to make it worth bothering with, Need a better dresser...

Reckon mustard would be more reliable than rape. It's also over £1 a kilo to buy so getting some in the tank wouldn't be a disaster

Quite... and very easy to separate, like osr seed and tares