Where am I going wrong ??

[Philip Hedeng]

Regarding the liquid fertilizer and foliar feeds, what does and does not work? I see quite alot of slugs and eggs right now in my fields and maybe it's better to engage extermination mode early to keep the population low for coming autum. I'm also trying to put the insecticides away for good. Nice results with the beetle traps @SorenIlsoe

 

[Breakthru]

Unless we have a 2013 type drought then populations will be on a par with 2012 slug disaster year.
Thats why we are treating along with the pre-harvest glypho.

 

[Breakthru]

Regarding the liquid fertilizer and foliar feeds, what does and does not work? I see quite alot of slugs and eggs right now in my fields and maybe it's better to engage extermination mode early to keep the population low for coming autum. I'm also trying to put the insecticides away for good. Nice results with the beetle traps @SorenIlsoe

Liquid N on milling wheats at dusk when they are active, ask Clive about effectiveness.
There are two foliar feeds with an effect on is contact only as per liquid N.
The other which I sell has "contact" plus residual effects and is safe to other soil organisms such as worms etc.
£7 - 10 /ha Ww - Osr. Can be mixed subject to water type and or conditioner.

 

[Fat hen]

@moretimeforgolf I feel your pain as a 2nd year direct driller. Strip till rarther than no till. We are fighting a losing battle with slugs. They have started on some poor first wheats this week, never had a problem in winter crops in the following spring before. They eat the OSR, wheat, Spring barley but not blackgrass! Biggest problems are on the clay. We roll every thing but can't consolidate. A ring press has been surrgested. I was hoping that a move to no till might improve the slug problem or to give up growing OSR. Slowly losing faith

No all soils are good for no till so if your on wet high magnesium clay then it might just be you need to run a very shallow tillage pass (carrier type thing) to get a kill of slugs as well as giving you some tilth so when you then go and drill with the no till drill you get the seed covered properly. Then you are going to have to roll which I dont think is a bad thing.

Its all about soil type!

Also think about applying compost as theres something in it the slugs dont like to the point we dont use pellets at all if its applied.

Interesting what you say about compost, will look out for that!

 

[Fat hen]

We are in year 3 of strip till. We had 3 doses of Pellets on WW after Osr which is expensive esp as we use contractors so you could be looking at over £20 per acre including Pellets. The fields weren't rolled and despite the expense we have large areas of bare patches where the slugs have demolished just about every plant. I have bought some rolls (Started buying my own kit now) and will be sure to learn from this mistake.

We didn't get the OSR drilled in time this year due to late SBarley so maybe it's a good thing in terms of slug population that we don't have any Osr this year in fact I am tempted to skip it if possible for a year or 2 to see what happens.

 

[Fuzzy]

No all soils are good for no till so if your on wet high magnesium clay then it might just be you need to run a very shallow tillage pass (carrier type thing) to get a kill of slugs as well as giving you some tilth so when you then go and drill with the no till drill you get the seed covered properly. Then you are going to have to roll which I dont think is a bad thing.

Its all about soil type!

Also think about applying compost as theres something in it the slugs dont like to the point we dont use pellets at all if its applied.

It is my experience as well with green compost, no slug pellets here where it is used.

 

[TelesnaAg]

Get rid of osr and your slug issue will halve immediately.

The same applies in AUS...my agro keeps saying to grow and i keep saying no!!

Ant...

 

[Fat hen]

It is my experience as well with green compost, no slug pellets here where it is used.

By Green compost are you meaning a cover crop?
I thought that slugs would like an overwinter cover crop. Why do you think you got this?

We had duck muck (smeared straw) spread onto on our slug ravaged WW, then v shallow discs. Then Strip til drill. Slug city!

 

[Fuzzy]

By Green compost are you meaning a cover crop?
I thought that slugs would like an overwinter cover crop. Why do you think you got this?

We had duck muck (smeared straw) spread onto on our slug ravaged WW, then v shallow discs. Then Strip til drill. Slug city!

No not cover crop. Compost made from green wheelie bin waste, mostly household grass and hedge cuttings

 

[Fat hen]

No not cover crop. Compost made from green wheelie bin waste, mostly household grass and hedge cuttings

Ah right , we use that from the council .

 

[Feldspar]

@dontknowanything - see the beginning of this thread for the papers on carabids. See here for evidence to back up my point about chelating agents:

http://www.biosci.ohio-state.edu/~soilecol/Full articles/2008/Crop Protection 28.pdf