When do you plan to drill winter wheat where grass-weeds are present?

[Chris F]

Will you be going for the same strategy as normal or has the weather (so far) this year changed your plans for the autumn?

 

[teslacoils]

I shall be drilling wheat after grass early.
I shall be drilling wheat after wheat late.
And will have no quarms leaving the lot and putting in with spring barley.

 

[Chris F]

I shall be drilling wheat after grass early.
I shall be drilling wheat after wheat late.
And will have no quarms leaving the lot and putting in with spring barley.

I wasn’t sure whether to add a load more options.

 

[David.]

1st week November target.
No point being swayed to by one exceptionally unhelpful autumn.
Ploughed up and pressed early in Sept, hope for at least one really good flush of rubbish.
Blackgrass, BYDV, don't want to be early.

 

[bobk]

Be finished end of September here , doubt we will have finished combining

 

[Barleymow]

will play it by ear , only need 3 days to drill it all .

 

[Pottersfarm]

Judging by the grass weed mess all the early drillers have around here then I’ll stick with starting after the October half term like normal.
They were all laughing over Christmas about how they’d got crops and we hadn’t. Now we’ve got crops and they’ve wasted all their inputs on nice crops of blackgrass. I think they are sub 2t/ac with the levels I’ve seen

 

[Wombat]

Some is undrillable after mid october in a normal year so will be early to mid october as normal. I won;t let last years weather dictate a rush to go early

 

[ewald]

12th October - back to traditional time round here

 

[wanton dwarf]

Seems to me that attempting to sow late as possible is risky for establishment & spraying

So we will be dialing it back with luck, but as always depends on the weather

 

[Brisel]

I need 2 weeks for winter cereals, so will start at the beginning of October. Any later than that just risks not getting drilled up. It's a toss up between blackgrass and no cash crop, both of which aren't sustainable!

 

[APJ]

Any wheat ground with grass weeds will now be cover cropped and spring sown for the foreseeable, fed up of using sprays that don’t work regardless of sowing dates.

 

[HarryB97]

Depends how bad the field is. A small amount the beginning of October, more than a small amount spring cropped and anything worse than that grass for 3-4 years. Did an hour round trip in the tractor the other night to collect a trailer, the amount of fields which should have been sprayed off or mown for silage was staggering, could barley see the wheat in a lot of them!

 

[robs1]

If people walked their fields in Jan/Feb this year most would have not found much BG, it's all germinated since beginning of April here so makes no odds if you drill August or Dec it is still going to come, drill earlier and get a thick crop to stop the light to make it germinate in spring. Have we not learnt that doing the same thing three years in a row just leads to a different issue .

 

[farmbrew]

Early drilled well established crop with pre ermerg sprays and good roguing discipline much better than late drilled badly established no spray.
I've seen November drilled wheat overcome with blackgrass this year.
If conditions are right I'm drilling September this time

 

[yellow belly]

If it got bad bg then it will not be planted in 2024

 

[ajd132]

If people walked their fields in Jan/Feb this year most would have not found much BG, it's all germinated since beginning of April here so makes no odds if you drill August or Dec it is still going to come, drill earlier and get a thick crop to stop the light to make it germinate in spring. Have we not learnt that doing the same thing three years in a row just leads to a different issue .

Agree with that we have loads of blackgrass come up in the later drilled patchier second wheat bits and a couple bits after oats and where there was herbicide damage. I thought they were relatively clean in February but now some fields are bad.

 

[john63]

15th October onwards for us. Although it's difficult locally seeing people's wheat they drilled in September looking well, whereas we didn't get anything in in the Autumn.

 

[Steevo]

Early drilled well established crop with pre ermerg sprays and good roguing discipline much better than late drilled badly established no spray.
I've seen November drilled wheat overcome with blackgrass this year.
If conditions are right I'm drilling September this time

Couldn't agree more.

I have early drilled crops that got sprayed and look decent.
Late drilled crops that got sprayed and look decent.
Late drilled crops that didn't get sprayed and look poor.

Late drilling alone hasn't worked, nor has ploughing alone.

The game changer is without doubt whether they had a pre-em or not.

One field was awful for blackgrass last year and this time around looks surprisingly clean so shows the pre-em has done its job well.


Will be an early October start for me and then just carry on from there. At some point this run of sopping wet autumns will come to an end.

 

[principal skinner]

As late into October as I dare, will watch forecasts and go from there.

Absolutely nothing will be drilled if I can’t see a window for pre em to go on.

New plan this year is to spray off day before drilling on a field by field basis, drill, roll and pre em on within 48hrs.