What is wrong with returning to ploughing?

[Two Tone]

When we farmed with horses, why did they invent the plough when using a tine would be simpler?
Because inverting the soil aided weed control.

So as herbicides are becoming less effective, should we not consider going back to the plough?

The trouble is, have we done so much damage re Blackgrass control with min till that even the plough will struggle to control it from now on?

My father gave up using the plough twice in his farming career and returned to it. I have now done the same (twice!!). Does this tell us something?

It seems to me in recent years that after the plough, came min till, followed by no till. Huge amounts of money spent on very expensive kit in order to save fuel and time.

Which all works very well in dry to normal years. But in wet years, like this one, every conceivable weed wants to grow at the expense of the crop! Or the crop just gives up!

Nobody can tell us what the weather is going to do next year. Unless you farm on free draining , consistent soil type land without the risk of water-logging, isn't it too risky to farm without using a plough at least somewhere in your rotation?

 

[Bury the Trash]

When we farmed with horses, why did they invent the plough when using a tine would be simpler?
Because inverting the soil aided weed control.

So as herbicides are becoming less effective, should we not consider going back to the plough?

The trouble is, have we done so much damage re Blackgrass control with min till that even the plough will struggle to control it from now on?

My father gave up using the plough twice in his farming career and returned to it. I have now done the same (twice!!). Does this tell us something?

It seems to me in recent years that after the plough, came min till, followed by no till. Huge amounts of money spent on very expensive kit in order to save fuel and time.

Which all works very well in dry to normal years. But in wet years, like this one, every conceivable weed wants to grow at the expense of the crop! Or the crop just gives up!

Nobody can tell us what the weather is going to do next year. Unless you farm on free draining , consistent soil type land without the risk of water-logging, isn't it too risky to farm without using a plough at least somewhere in your rotation?

I just plough my own furrow.........

 

[Two Tone]

I just plough my own furrow.........

I think you might be right - as your name suggests

It strikes me that we are forever being forced into trying to cut costs and end up in effect cutting corners, which come back to bite us in the end!

We get fooled into thinking a system works, which it sometimes does given a normal or dry year, only to be disasterous in a bad year!

Better to stick to what you know works. Better the devil you know that the one you don't!

 

[Two Tone]

The same is true with establishing Rape. Here is a post I put on osr yields thread that got me starting this thread, which might explain why rape yields have been so poor for many this year:



Years ago, we used to successfully grow rape by ploughing and immediately combi drilling it into freshly turned over moist soils.
Then we bought a Sumo Trio and used this instead of the plough. Sometimes it needed Sumo-ing twice.

Then we bought a seeder to fit on the Sumo. We tried will width deflector plates, but eventually ended up drilling bands in line with the tines (50 cm apart), but behind the discs. In normal years this works fine and we can drill rape at the same time as combining, without tying up any more that one tractor and driver.

Though many have tried min disturbance, like using a Sumo but without the discs, my view was that we can kill the blackgrass in rape, so why not encourage it to grow then kill it it herbicides.

That works fine in medium land in normal weather years, BUT not in wet years like this one!!!

So, last August we used the:
1.Sumo and seeder on about half our ground.
2.Because a herd of cows had twice run through a field of wheat just before harvest and flattened so much of it, we ploughed and combi-drilled this field,
3.Because we now already had the combi on a tractor, we decided to Sumo a block and combi drill behind it.

The results this Harvest were staggeringly different!
Equal best was the plough OR Sumo followed by the combi drill! Yields were very close to our average of about 1.4t/acre!

Next best was Sumo and Seeder on medium to light land. Yields about 1t/acre

Worst was Sumo and Seeder on heavy land. Yields about 0.5- 0.75 t/acre. Why? Because it was so wet, the gaps between the rows filled up with rubbish - Blackgrass, Runch, Fools Parsley and Mayweed. No crop competition caused the weeds to run riot!

Guess which way we are going to drill all our Rape from now on!


That doesn't necessarily mean we will plough it all. It will depend on the soil type and conditions at the time of planting. But we will not be using wide spacing rows or the Sumo seeder on this farm, in this area, ever again. I's far too risky!

Being flexible to the conditions at the time is the key. But as nobody can tell us what the weather is going to be like next spring and summer, I shall be using the plough again more to cover my options

 

[DRC]

On a farm of my size, I can't afford to have a yard full of different drills and cultivators for every occasion, so tend to stick with a 5 furrow plough and 3 m power Harrow combi.
I sometimes think that by the time you've messed about with stale seed beds and spraying off with glyphosate , you may as well have ploughed it!

 

[Bury the Trash]

... I didn't mean make light of the subject...
Flexability - or the best of all types - just ripping instead of ploughing, in a certain situation /at a certain time - as long as extra expensive machinery is not required.
I have to say we dont own a subsoiller- just use a variation in ploughing depth and crop types.Thats not on light land either..


. It was,....' bury the trash not the plough' ..mods kindly shortened it for me .....

 

[franklin]

'tis dry. GOod conditions for the plough......

.....but go into field, find 8" cracks, and find tillered BG plant bent over shedding its seeds into cracks.

Just begs the question what the benefit would be if a) soil is dry and cracked deeeper than plough depth and b) BG seeds are probably mixed through the profile by now.

But for me ploughing now, running the press through in October, and leaving until spring is the best way to get a good BG kill and spring seedbed for land I'm not patient enough to wait to DD in spring.

 

[SilliamWhale]

Every day is a good no till day on my farm now. Why destroy soil structure with ploughing?

 

[franklin]

Every day is a good no till day on my farm now. Why destroy soil structure with ploughing?

I am looking forward to seeing the yield monitor when we go through the ploughed field vs the (for us) very, very small quantity of shallow tillage.

 

[Two Tone]

Every day is a good no till day on my farm now. Why destroy soil structure with ploughing?

I kind of agree with you. Sometimes the plough isn't the best thing. It completely depends on the year, conditions and the soil. Every farm, even every field can be different. Most of all it depends on the weather.

A couple of years ago, the BBC did a harvest program featuring Tom Bradshaw from Essex. He struggled to drill his fields because he didn't want to plough them. But in the end he had to. Tom is an Albrecht fan who knows that he needs to get the top few inches of his soil working for him, by creating a special microcosm. He knew this would be lost by ploughing. But sometimes you've just got to do it.

My answer is give it as much muck as you can to get the organic matter up.

 

[nick...]

I normally plough then combi drill rape.last year done half plough and half cultivated twice then combi drilled.the cultivated stuff was the worse rape I've ever had and I even flailed it all of because it was pretty much all weeds and no rape.suprising as I had a decent amount of soil and it went in well.all plough again this year
Nick...

 

[Drillman]

Muck it, plough it, combi drill it. That's what I do here. Have looked other options, but on my small farm every acre has to pay I can't afford a machine for every situation or risk experimenting or moving away from what I know works well.

 

[bobk]

If there was no min till / no till would there be no blackgrass ?

 

[mo!]

If there was no min till / no till would there be no blackgrass ?

Nope. My neighbour only has a plough and has resorted to putting the whole farm down to grass.

 

[deere66]

Horses and grey fergys/majors didn't paddle the land to buggery. Nowadays if you haven't got 250hp on a plough you're a leper. Oh and probably the availability of labour, weather patterns and winter cropping has something to do with it, everything is such a rush now

 

[Douglasmn]

Ploughing is by far the easier way to get a good crop for most people. Easiest isn't necessarily the best though. Any Tom, Dock or Harry can make a success of ploughing and combi drilling. Takes a much more switched on farmer to make a success of non inversion year in year out. How many of us prefer to blame the system than blame ourselves instead!?

 

[Generaldogsboby]

Horses and grey fergys/majors didn't paddle the land to buggery. Nowadays if you haven't got 250hp on a plough you're a leper. Oh and probably the availability of labour, weather patterns and winter cropping has something to do with it, everything is such a rush now

We gave up on the plough on 2 fields a couple of years ago. The whole farm is still relatively clean still except those 2 fields ! Can't see why our forebears bothered to make machines to invert the soil not just a tine and disc if it worked so well. Think again.

 

[bobk]

We gave up on the plough on 2 fields a couple of years ago. The whole farm is still relatively clean still except those 2 fields ! Can't see why our forebears bothered to make machines to invert the soil not just a tine and disc if it worked so well. Think again.

It's working for some people .

 

[SilliamWhale]

I am looking forward to seeing the yield monitor when we go through the ploughed field vs the (for us) very, very small quantity of shallow tillage.

The thing is whether you do see a difference or not I'm not sure you can necessarily attribute to doing a bit of tillage on day one of a plants life or not. I always say when I no till sometimes I get better crops, sometimes worse, mostly the same. Every tool works, ploughing works, no till works, just depends on how you want to cut your cloth but I honestly don't expect one system to prove superior to another - one is just cheaper and better for the soil structure than another thats all

 

[SilliamWhale]

If there was no min till / no till would there be no blackgrass ?

Course not. Sames as with ploughing