Why I'm quitting no till (for now)

James W

Member
On our continuous wheat block we never see a slug.. but we have lost crops of wheat behind rape after many kg of pellets have been applied. The slugs proliferate in rape because the yellow flowers fall like a thick carpet in the base of the crop through the summer which is the perfect environment for breeding, egg storage, feeding, growing and re-breeding. I once knew a farmer who used to apply slug pellets on rape crops during mid-flowering to murder all the slugs before they bred under the falling flowers, he swore by this technique... we would have done it ourselves but i dont think its legal without a real and present slug risk to the crop in hand ;)
 

Robert G

New Member
I just looked on the Triton web-site and they have posted a before and after photo on the home page and somehow it does seemed to have magically dried out the soil, must be an illusion, clever photography perhaps? It looks like a good crop on the same field on the website.
If it is trick photography it must be a clever trick because the woods on the hill look the same to me. We are bogged down, cant move , we are parked up till April now. I would go and get one of these Triton drills but 2 reasons why not... i think our tractor will still fall through the field to its axles, and second, if its that wet and it keeps raining the plants will die at some point in mid-winter. Its all very well having a magic wand but isnt it better to play it safe and wait till the spring?
 
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We have owned or tried most of the no-till drills on the market and if you are using a terrastar you are cultivating... I therefore deduced that you have been sold a direct-drill which, on clay land, is more effective after a light cultivation . Hence my suggestion that a change in your drill might be the answer if you are struggling to stick with no-till.

Had a look at the videos of this drill. Whatever it is, it isn't a no-till drill. Lots of talk of false seedbeds too makes it sound rather like the Claydon system. Again, looking at the video, looks to me like good risk of stimulating black-grass and going into wet clay seedbeds very late would make me worry about slugs. I don't really see what it's offering that's going to help me. I prefer to do my cultivating in the dry if at all possible, not at drilling if I can help it.
 

James W

Member
Probably not going to help you then. The drill is a no-till though. The high speed chitting videos you will have seen are the same as we have been doing to chit black-grass. We have been running it like a stubble rake, 25kmh 2inchs. Once it greens over we do it again , and on our worst fields we have just been over it a third pass. Our rape went in direct-drilled as will our beans , best rape stand we ever had, be interesting to see how it yields , long way to go yet.

Out of interest what type of drill do you run ?
 
Probably not going to help you then. The drill is a no-till though. The high speed chitting videos you will have seen are the same as we have been doing to chit black-grass. We have been running it like a stubble rake, 25kmh 2inchs. Once it greens over we do it again , and on our worst fields we have just been over it a third pass. Our rape went in direct-drilled as will our beans , best rape stand we ever had, be interesting to see how it yields , long way to go yet.

Out of interest what type of drill do you run ?

Latest NIAB data casting doubt on the usefulness of getting black-grass chits prior to drilling. Currently run a Claydon SR and a JD750a.
 
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martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
Latest NIAB data casting doubt on the usefulness of getting black-grass chits prior to drilling. .
@SilliamWhale posted this heretical idea on the forum some years ago. As usual, he's way ahead of the field. The mystery is why HM the Queen refuses to give him the knighthood he so richly deserves, but that's another story. I'm reassured that NIAB are finally catching up.
 
@SilliamWhale posted this heretical idea on the forum some years ago. As usual, he's way ahead of the field. The mystery is why HM the Queen refuses to give him the knighthood he so richly deserves, but that's another story. I'm reassured that NIAB are finally catching up.

I must say im glad that potion i sent you is still working!
 
It heartens me that plenty of No Tillers find that slugs reduce with time. Personally I've had good years and think that things are improving, only to slip back the following year. So much depends on how damp things are, I tried a stripper header and it caused major slug issues by creating a damp microclimate. North facing slopes are much more of an issue than flat land, the dew stays longer and falls sooner - more slug feeding time.

It's years since I used neonics, and rarely use any insecticides, I'm sure the predators are there, but not quite on top of the job.

@Dan Powell has had enough of slugs, @No Worries and I manage to live with them but are not completely in control yet. All three of us farm in a damp environment. I am very interested in how @Louis Mc gets on.

We could grow less OSR, but other than spring beans, most alternatives have practical or profitability issues.

Richard,
ecaxtly the same for me here : in dry years or even dry periods at drilling I get away without slug issues, but as soon as it is a little wet over longer time, the population simply explodes !!
Have dropped osr down to 10% and only way to get it established is with a shallow cultivation with dry weather to kill the slugs and dry out the eggs. Beans are save agains slugs, but they`re breeding in beans like crazy. Slug pressure after beans is even worse than after osr I feel.
Conclusion for me after 10 years DDing with nearly no use of insecticides is, that all this thinkig of balancing predators and slugs when you stop cultivating and spraying insecticides is simply not true as slug population can multiply within weeks (it feels more like days.....) when it gets wet enough for them which predadors probably can`t. Other thought is if predators feel that happy with temperatures <10°C and daily rain like we often have here and slugs go like crazy then. Even under the snow when the soil is not frozen in some winters !
Is this therory of balancing slugs and predators maybe only working in warm and mainly dry climates with a little sunshine now and then ?? Here the climate is the opposite and it`s seems not to work for me .....
 

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
Richard,
ecaxtly the same for me here : in dry years or even dry periods at drilling I get away without slug issues, but as soon as it is a little wet over longer time, the population simply explodes !!
Have dropped osr down to 10% and only way to get it established is with a shallow cultivation with dry weather to kill the slugs and dry out the eggs. Beans are save agains slugs, but they`re breeding in beans like crazy. Slug pressure after beans is even worse than after osr I feel.
Conclusion for me after 10 years DDing with nearly no use of insecticides is, that all this thinkig of balancing predators and slugs when you stop cultivating and spraying insecticides is simply not true as slug population can multiply within weeks (it feels more like days.....) when it gets wet enough for them which predadors probably can`t. Other thought is if predators feel that happy with temperatures <10°C and daily rain like we often have here and slugs go like crazy then. Even under the snow when the soil is not frozen in some winters !
Is this therory of balancing slugs and predators maybe only working in warm and mainly dry climates with a little sunshine now and then ?? Here the climate is the opposite and it`s seems not to work for me .....
We think it rains quite a lot here, but it is practically a desert compared to what some of you guys have to put up with. There must be a way of dealing with them, else you wouldn't have any vegetation at all. Hedgiculture?
 

Robert G

New Member
Latest NIAB data casting doubt on the usefulness of getting black-grass chits prior to drilling. Currently run a Claydon SR and a JD750a.
750a is a time honoured successful drill. Acid test is you never see a nearly new 750a for sale s/h people keep them for years.
If you look at the forum classifieds its eye opening to see want type of drills are represented by a long string of nearly new s/h drills for sale. The 750a doesnt address compaction though and this year we have had a trickier harvest and wheelings are set into the fields so our dts drill has repaired all the damage as it mid-soils the whole field to 7inchs and non-inversion. btw the terrastar is a direct copy of the Australian tiller that has been around for years so i guess its quite a good implement. The terrastar at Cereals event was full to the frame with rubbish , does yours pick up residues?

We have 5star resistant black-grass and if we dont pre-chit the black grass we dont get a crop. We gave up using Avadex followed by Crystal/Defy as it no longer works on our grass weeds. That mix was good for a while but we have now selected down to total resistance, and Atlantis works like nitrogen on our grass weeds. After a light stubble disc we get 1000 grass weeds per square meter on our worst patchs (which is the seed from only 10 blackgrass heads) which are killed off with glyphos or re-chitted with another top cultivation. How can that be wrong approach !!?
 
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I normally ask myself what would my great grandfather have done - he had no slug pellets, pesticides or big horse power

As usual I think the key is rotation and diversify

Certainly right.
My grandfather farmed 70 years ago with this:
4 % winter-rye
10 % spring oats
8 % winter wheat
15 % beets (sugar, feed and to eat)
2 % potatoes
18 % legu-grain-mixture for fodder
32 % pasture
8 % clover

and then he had on his 45 ha-farm
5 horses
1 bull
25 cows
14 heifers
12 calves
10 sows
40 fattening pigs
and various kinds of poultry.


That means 60% of the land was shallow but intensively tilled, harrowed and hoed multiple times a year when it was dry enough to walk (man and horse) and 40% of the land was rested for several years under pasture and clover, some grazed, some cut.
All of that is no habitat for slugs at all !!
Maybe that way of farming would decrease slug numbers dramatically, but ......
Well, enough organic farms farm that way and probably have less slug problems - but do they improve soil OM, soil health and have no other problems at all ?? If so, that must be heaven.
 

Robert G

New Member
I normally ask myself what would my great grandfather have done - he had no slug pellets, pesticides or big horse power

As usual I think the key is rotation and diversify
Your great Grandfather would have been doing alot of spring sowing in March April, the crop would have shot away from the slugs. Also, yields were under 1tonne per acre of wheat, the population of the UK would have been about 10million, and most of our food was coming in from the USA..
 
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Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Your great Grandfather would have been doing alot of spring sowing in March April, the crop would have shot away from the slugs. Also, yields were under 1tonne per acre of wheat, the population of the UK would have been about 10million, and most of our food was coming in from the USA..

I’m not suggesting we start farming like they did, more that the way they did Farm holds SOME of the answers to today’s issues

Rotation, bigger % of spring cropping, diversity and livestock are the lessons we can learn from them and all big parts of the jigsaws if you want to be less dependant on bags and bottles as indeed they were
 
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glasshouse

Member
Location
lothians
Your great Grandfather would have been doing alot of spring sowing in March April, the crop would have shot away from the slugs. Also, yields were under 1tonne per acre of wheat, the population of the UK would have been about 10million, and most of our food was coming in from the USA..
If you dont put on bagged nitrogen, you dont get slugs.
my theory is that nitrogen makes the plants soft and so the slugs can eat more and breed faster.
i went organic in 99 and never saw another slug till 2010 when i reverted to chemicals
 
Location
Cheshire
We have 5star resistant black-grass.... After a light stubble disc we get 1000 grass weeds per square meter on our worst patchs (which is the seed from only 10 blackgrass heads) which are killed off with glyphos or re-chitted with another top cultivation. How can that be wrong approach !!?

Compaction and blackgrass. Not enough OM and diversity. Sounds like the soil needs a break from cultivation and wheat.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
We had as many slug plagues when we ploughed heavy land as when we direct drill it. Some years the seed was hollowed out overnight where we power harrowed it in. All that steel and diesel, hours in the cab and some of it came to nothing.

Good drainage, (slugs love a wet area), rotation including livestock, the straw rake and ferric phosphate pellets seem to work. I think you need plenty of ground beetles about as well.

I am not going to tempt fate, but a month and half ago I was walking across slug infested heavy land wet rape stubbles wondering whether it was worth drilling anything. This morning there is a reasonable stand of wheat there. Raked, (pretty wet, wondered if we were wasting our time) direct drilled, (nothing fancy, just Moore Unidrill and again looked a bit too wet) 2kg of ferric phosphate and that's it, except for one area where we didn't pellet after drilling which has needed two 5 kg doses of pellets to get control, (a stitch in time saves nine). The weather has been kind since then though, so we have been lucky. Luck does come into it.

It's nice to lift back the OSR trash and see earthworms going down their holes and ground beetles running about. You lose a lot of that with cultivation.

Go steady on the herbicides till the roots get down. Just 0.3 liberator and 0.12 hurricane on after emergence. Don't want to scorch those shallow roots. It'll get half rate crystal in a month or so when it isn't frosty. We don't have a big blackgrass problem though. Just some bromes and AMG and cranesbill.
 

Robert G

New Member
I’m not suggesting we start farming like they did, more that the way they did Farm holds SOME of the answers to today’s issues

Rotation, bigger % of spring cropping, diversity and livestock are the lessons we can learn from them and all big parts of the jigsaws if you want to be less dependant on bags and bottles as indeed they were
that is a good point, there are sound pointers from the past
 

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