Where do I start... Help!

[4course]

finding a cheap tined cultivator under a drill rather than a ph combi or stand alone drill is giving us noticeable cost timeliness and establishment benefits following the plough .wether ploughed early or just in front depending on soil rotation and other non combinable workload constraints. we are on heavyish moisture retentive soil !!!!

 

[nick...]

Not sure the 165hp would boss the job but you should look at a Mzuri, might be ok if you say the land is lightish, excellent for labour and cost saving, can’t complain about mine yet after a few years, strip till needs a change of mind set though, in my opinion.

I had a look at one last autumn and owner reckoned I’d want at least 220 hp to pull one
nick...

 

[Grass And Grain]

I recon watch the neighbours for a couple of years.

Maybe use contractors, then can keep plough and combi for if weather turns or contractor doesn't turn up.

Tell contractor there's some work available, but if he doesn't get to you before 25th Sept then you'll plough it and drill yourself. That'll keep him keen.

If considering own drill, possibly go for wide rows to reduce wearing metal.

Seem to be some older claydons about for sub 10k. At least you can sell it on again, whereas a home made drill might be hard to sell for decent money.

Have you any blackgrass or brome?can't use Broadway star on winter barley, so if want winter barley in rotation then brome can be a problem from what I've seen. Which might mean s. Barley, then late harvest, then struggle to get rape in.

Remove packer from subdisc, accord hopper and 3 rows of coulters ay wider spacing than normal. Wife on rollers. Finished for tea time.

 

[Spud]

What's your rotation @Drillman ?
Could you graze a cover crop, or is land not suitable?
Old Claydon you suggest is a good idea imo.
I use dd as a strategic tool - it's better in some places of the rotation/seasons than others.

How about ww, wb, cover crop (mob grazed by cattle) s barley, w barley, osr (or cover crop then spring oats, or fodder beet for own feeding?)

Direct drilling spring corn is arguably lower risk than winter corn.

You don't need to plough muck down.

On my sticky kelter : ww (dd) ww2 (min til) muck then cover crop (take the wheelings out pre drilling the cc) spring oats (dd), ww (currently min til) ww2, w beans (dd). As land slowly improves, more of this will be direct drilled. It'd happen faster if I replaced the second wheat with a cover crop then s barley, but I can't afford to do that just now.

Lighter land: ww (mintil) wb, (plough combi) cc, muck, beet (trialling a bit of no plough beet this time) ploughed immediately after lifting, spring oats (seed) ww (dd) wb (plough) cc, muck, potatoes.
Replacing wb with sb would allow more direct drilling (wheat vols in w barley a problem if we don't plough) but w barley spreads harvest and out performs sb, particularly re straw.

 

[Matt77]

I had a look at one last autumn and owner reckoned I’d want at least 220 hp to pull one
nick...

I wouldn’t disagree on that, I’ve been told the DTS is much less horsepower hungry, but I wasn’t that impressed with the seed placement

 

[nonemouse]

You are in a similar situation to us about 4 or years since.
Drill about 300acres a year combinable crops, plus about 60 acres grass seeds and stubble turnips.
Tractors available 160 hp (normally on a 3m lemken power harrow and box drill with double disc coulters)
135 hp on a plough. Another tractor and 3m power harrow available to beat the heavier land into submission.
Most of the land reasonable clay loam and work about half of it combi following plough. The rest getting progressively heavier with the worst is best not ploughed if possible, but still grows a good crop of wheat if we can get it established.
Spent a couple of years looking at various systems. wasn't keen on the claydon, like the mzuri and the DTS but decided we were along way short on Horsepower to make them really work.
Autumn 2018 had the Ryetec drill in on demo, put some 2nd wheat in straight into stubble and drilled some wheat into rape stubble. both worked really well and gave great crops, liked that the drill could easily be used on worked ground (min till or full plough) and gave us the option to stich grass seed into some of the grazing ground.
So plan was to keep old drill as a backup for wet weather and for putting winter barley in after ploughing for grass weeds. And buy direct drill to do stubble turnips most of the wheat, beans and spring barley where ground conditions were suitable.
Drill was delivered October 2019 after things had turned very wet and we drilled nothing last year after 23rd of September with any drill. Ended up ploughing most of the fields for winter/spring wheat and spring barley just to try and dry soils out and recover structure especially where we had made a mess getting straw off and spreading FYM and slurry. Did direct drill 30 acres of beans into stubble, but our timing was wrong and the drought hit the beans, but think yield was equally bad as a neighbours who put his in at the same time with a plough&combi.
What did work well was drilling into the overwintered green stubble and using a pre em roundup ment we had a very cheap herbicide program and the crop kept very clean, on some of our worst grass weed land.
This Autumn harvest was very late due weather and high proportion spring cropping.
successfully drilled 40 acres stubble turnips with the new drill, got a couple of fields of wheat into worked ground with it, before we finished harvesting wheat and drilled wheat back into the bean stubble (but that doesnt look to clever as large parts of it have been sat under water since drilling)
Everything else we have drilled since has been a case of snatching what we could with the plough/combi due to the wet. Used up all the winter wheat seed we had on farm, but still 30-40 acres short on planned wheat acreage.
So in summary like the disc drill, but its not the right machine in a wet year, we know it will work brilliantly in a drier autumn. Going keep tweaking the system, plan is for next year to have a low disturbance subsoiler/toolbar that we can pull in front of the drill to help soil structure till we get soils adapted to the system.

 

[Drillman]

@Spud


Rotation is

Wheat, Wheat or S barley, W barley then OSR

or

Wheat, wheat, s barley, S oats.

Was leaning more to S barley but 2 disastrous years with Maltsters and a struggle to get OSR in after it meant we gone back to W barley a bit more.

winter barley never performs brilliantly here but gets us a start to harvest, fills a bay in the grainstore for cattle feed some nice straw for cattle and allows us to get OSR land mucked and drilled in good time

Do need some spring cropping for over winter stubble for stewardship.

not convinced we would get any cover crop worth having established after anything other than W barley here.

 

[Spud]

[QUOTE

@Spud


Rotation is

Wheat, Wheat or S barley, W barley then OSR

or

Wheat, wheat, s barley, S oats.

Was leaning more to S barley but 2 disastrous years with Maltsters and a struggle to get OSR in after it meant we gone back to W barley a bit more.

winter barley never performs brilliantly here but gets us a start to harvest, fills a bay in the grainstore for cattle feed some nice straw for cattle and allows us to get OSR land mucked and drilled in good time

Do need some spring cropping for over winter stubble for stewardship.

not convinced we would get any cover crop worth having established after anything other than W barley here.

You're not that far from me, so similar climate, albeit different land.
A mistake I made early on was getting cc too thick - it's what's under the ground that's important, not what's on top. If it's too thick, it won't dry very quick in spring to get the next crop sown.
Granted, if the cc is to be grazed by cattle, it's a different story, it'll need to be in early to provide enough biomass.

 

[Fish]

edit- Combine ran well with your fancy concave in.

thankyou.

Good to know the concave from oz worked, but having gotten it in, I bet you hope you never have to take out again

Re dd, you are welcome to look round this place if you think it would help, 6 years + of no till, you may remember our very second hand tine drill scattered across the work shop floor, that I feel is the kind of machine that would work in your situation.

 

[Drillman]

Good to know the concave from oz worked, but having gotten it in, I bet you hope you never have to take out again

Re dd, you are welcome to look round this place if you think it would help, 6 years + of no till, you may remember our very second hand tine drill scattered across the work shop floor, that I feel is the kind of machine that would work in your situation.

Yes I’ve no wish to ever remove that concave took 2 of us to wriggle it in.

And yes your tine drill I liked the idea of