Why I'm quitting no till (for now)

[Dan Powell]

Seeing as I have been asked why I am quitting no till on another thread, Here We Are!

Several reasons:
1. The main one. I have never managed to get on top of the slug problem. Tiny little grey field slugs that don't bother my slug traps but then decimate my crops every bloomin' year.
2. The system dictating the rotation. As a fairly small scale farm I find it hard to justify spring crops that barely pay. Spring beans did well but little profit. Spring barley disappointed at barely 2t/acre. I have no interest in growing linseed or millet etc as I cannot see a margin. If these paid then I could have dropped OSR and probably solved the slug issue.
3. As a mixed farm with baling and muckspreading sometimes we have struggled to avoid creating compaction.
4. I'm a bit uncomfortable with all the extra glyphosate and pellets I've been using. Doesn't feel right somehow. Fails the gut-feeling test.
5. Cost savings have been outstripped by spending on drills, pelleter, pellets, gps, lower yields etc.
6. Too bloody stressful.... is it a crop, isn't it? Need to walk every square metre and still not sure until May! Life is too short.

That's most of the reasons anyway.

 

[Warp Land Farmer]

What will you do instead? Striptill / mintill / plough establishment?

 

[Crabtree]

What are you going to do instead to solve all the problems ??

 

[tr250]

Seeing as I have been asked why I am quitting no till on another thread, Here We Are!

Several reasons:
1. The main one. I have never managed to get on top of the slug problem. Tiny little grey field slugs that don't bother my slug traps but then decimate my crops every bloomin' year.
2. The system dictating the rotation. As a fairly small scale farm I find it hard to justify spring crops that barely pay. Spring beans did well but little profit. Spring barley disappointed at barely 2t/acre. I have no interest in growing linseed or millet etc as I cannot see a margin. If these paid then I could have dropped OSR and probably solved the slug issue.
3. As a mixed farm with baling and muckspreading sometimes we have struggled to avoid creating compaction.
4. I'm a bit uncomfortable with all the extra glyphosate and pellets I've been using. Doesn't feel right somehow. Fails the gut-feeling test.
5. Cost savings have been outstripped by spending on drills, pelleter, pellets, gps, lower yields etc.
6. Too bloody stressful.... is it a crop, isn't it? Need to walk every square metre and still not sure until May! Life is too short.

That's most of the reasons anyway.

What drill you using? I'm similar to you smallish mixed farm only in year 2 dd but only on bits and pieces at the moment but I find it enjoyable experimenting. Why can't you use your drill to drill into cultivated land and do a bit of opportunistic dd

 

[Dan Powell]

What drill you using? I'm similar to you smallish mixed farm only in year 2 dd but only on bits and pieces at the moment but I find it enjoyable experimenting. Why can't you use your drill to drill into cultivated land and do a bit of opportunistic dd

That may be what I will do. We have a simtech and an oldish Kuhn SD.

This year we have ploughed and combi drilled a fair bit but the combi is overkill on most of the ground. Not keen on min till as bad for slugs.

 

[Clive]

sorry to hear it's not working for you

Rotation is number 1 importance though and to me it sounds like thats the key issue here and certainly the a big part of slug solution jigsaw

You have to do whats right for you though and making money has to be number 1 priority for anyone

how many years in are you Dan ?

 

[Dan Powell]

5 years although we phased it in so it varies from field to field.

 

[T C]

Know the pain, been there before. Brome and slugs beat me over 8 years.
Now I think I have a system that will work if further metaldehyde restrictions come in, could work without glyphosphate and does not dictate the rotation.
For us there are too few break crops that can be grown reliably to really get a DD system working.
I could never get spring barley to perform, soils slow to warm I think - if we sow later the ground can get dry and we risk a poor late harvest.
I learned a lot trying it and watch others with interest (as I am sure they watched me!).
I think we will settle on a rotation for cultivation that suits the crop best and a crop rotation that suits the bank!!

 

[Dan Powell]

Know the pain, been there before. Brome and slugs beat me over 8 years.
Now I think I have a system that will work if further metaldehyde restrictions come in, could work without glyphosphate and does not dictate the rotation.
For us there are too few break crops that can be grown reliably to really get a DD system working.
I could never get spring barley to perform, soils slow to warm I think - if we sow later the ground can get dry and we risk a poor late harvest.
I learned a lot trying it and watch others with interest (as I am sure they watched me!).
I think we will settle on a rotation for cultivation that suits the crop best and a crop rotation that suits the bank!!

What system have you arrived at now?

 

[T C]

Horsch FX (had it for 13 seasons), 5 furrow plough and a 6year old vaderstad (expensive to buy cheap so far to run). With a 240hp tractor it is an easy job for 750ac of crop.
Horsch then vad for osr and wheat after it. 2nd wheat and spring barley either plough or horsch then weather.
On our scale we need to maintain output as most fixed costs are under control. Could probably cut them if I contracted big bits out but seasons like this would be tricky.

 

[Richard III]

Very sorry you have had to take this decision Dan, I know how hard you have tried to make it work.

Slugs definitely become more of an issue the further North and West you go in our country. I use more pellets than I would like some years and they certainly cause me significant stress at times. For some reason I get a lot of larger Arion species here now, although the small field slug can be a problem after OSR. @No Worries seems to get similar problems to you with small grey field slugs.

You are right, at the end of the day you have to make money and enjoy what you do, I hope you can find a system that will allow you to do both going forward.

 

[Cutlerstom]

Slugs are also a big issue for me. Thought I'd got on top of them reasonably well for wheat after rape. However, took my eye off the ball on wheat after linseed, where I wasn't expecting trouble. A 16th Oct drilling behind linseed has been severely hollowed out. Emergence painfully slow, and a late does of pellets may have got it away, but we'll see.

In the same breath, last year I had wheat hollowed out down to 100/m2 on average across the field, with lots of bare patches. Managed it for tillers with early N and hoped for 7.5t/ha. It did 11. My agronomist talked me out of pulling it up/re drilling in Oct, so I have him to thank and a valuable lesson about how wheat can compensate.

 

[SimonD]

I didn't roll our Wheat in this year and there's plenty of slugs about but hopefully manageable.

Does a wider rotation reduce the slug burden (?) and if so what's working for those out there or does the it require additives to take them out? Can't see an organic system working in no-till scenario if slugs are that bad.

 

[James W]

Seeing as I have been asked why I am quitting no till on another thread, Here We Are!

Several reasons:
1. The main one. I have never managed to get on top of the slug problem. Tiny little grey field slugs that don't bother my slug traps but then decimate my crops every bloomin' year.
2. The system dictating the rotation. As a fairly small scale farm I find it hard to justify spring crops that barely pay. Spring beans did well but little profit. Spring barley disappointed at barely 2t/acre. I have no interest in growing linseed or millet etc as I cannot see a margin. If these paid then I could have dropped OSR and probably solved the slug issue.
3. As a mixed farm with baling and muckspreading sometimes we have struggled to avoid creating compaction.
4. I'm a bit uncomfortable with all the extra glyphosate and pellets I've been using. Doesn't feel right somehow. Fails the gut-feeling test.
5. Cost savings have been outstripped by spending on drills, pelleter, pellets, gps, lower yields etc.
6. Too bloody stressful.... is it a crop, isn't it? Need to walk every square metre and still not sure until May! Life is too short.

That's most of the reasons anyway.

The Triton side-press seed drill is incredible, you need to see one before you give up min-till. But your right, if you put 25% of your farm down to spring crops ... then your profits are out the window and your rotation.

 

[yellow belly]

I find that slugs are a bigger risk on the not so heavy soil types light thin land no problem out and out heavy also not to much of a problem
I use a disk drill that suits heavy land leaving a well firmed slot on less heavy land the soil can be a bit looser

I am also finding that the more years of notill the better it gets

 

[Andrew K]

What actual soil type are you on Bill?

 

[Louis Mc]

Deter seems to be making slugs worse in subsequent years from what I've seen and heard

 

[Feldspar]

Have largely got away with slug problems this year, although it took 3 lots of pellets on the wheat behind OSR which was Deter treated. This was Terrastarred twice (yes, I know we're now not talking about no-till) and then drilled straight in. Pre-pelleted when putting glyphosate on. Drilling ended up being later than expected so OSR volunteers had died away. Low rate of pellets with drill down the slot (which I'm not sure is really helping us at all after another season of watching). Then an emergency third dose just before the crop came up. Both first and third doses killed a lot of slugs. Without both I think we could have had a pretty thin crop. As it is the crop is fine. The headland though we put the power harrow through which resulted in less slotting and I think quite a bit of mechanical damage.

I think post OSR this year (which had a lot of harvest trafficking which we haven't got rid of) we'll Sumo and allow to dry completely and then probably power harrow straight before drilling. I think this last pass makes quite a bit of difference to slug numbers and saves at least one pass of Sluxx (which we're onto on the last pass).

Elsewhere slugs have been threatening, but I did parts of fields and I can't see as much difference as I thought I might see given how many slugs I could find in the slots. I think warm weather has really helped this year./

On the general no-till front, our one bit of no-till 2nd wheat isn't up yet, but looking at how that went in compared to our 2nd wheat straight into one Terrastar pass stubbles, I think we are making it a lot easier for ourselves with a light surface cultivation, particularly in the spring drilling and 2nd cereal slot. Winter barley has come very well into wheat stubbles which were Terrastarred once. That pass gives a crucial bit of extra tilth which dries much faster after a rain, stops hairpinning in big patches, and gives a bit of soil to crumble in around the slot.

That said, I think if I had balers, muck spreaders and the like, I'd be more tempted to do more cultivation.

 

[Cutlerstom]

I didn't roll our Wheat in this year and there's plenty of slugs about but hopefully manageable.

Does a wider rotation reduce the slug burden (?) and if so what's working for those out there or does the it require additives to take them out? Can't see an organic system working in no-till scenario if slugs are that bad.

Not sure. We only started growing OSR 10 years ago, and we certainly had lots of slugs before then too. always had 5/6 year rotation including 2 spring crops, i think a lot of it is due to soil type, and certain crops exacerbate it.

 

[Cutlerstom]

Deter seems to be making slugs worse in subsequent years from what I've seen and heard

deter certainly does nothing to help. whether is makes things worse or not, I'm not sure. the Centre for Sustainable Cropping at the James Hutton Institute I was up at on tuesday have increased their insect numbers including predators, and they are using neonic treated seed. whether they would have increased more without neonic is another question of course!