Wide spacing cereal crops... pictures please

Warnesworth

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Chipping Norton
yes avatar and co both 250mm included

avatar represents the biggest £ saving however as a 240 hp could not pull 12m if spacing was closer and certainly would not be using 3L/ha to establish a crop

6m Co on same tractor uses circa 4.5L/ha
So what you are saying is lightweight drill per unit length means lighter tractor and less draft requirement which in turn gives good yields, and good savings... and is kinder to the soil and your pocket.

I see.........
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
So what you are saying is lightweight drill per unit length means lighter tractor and less draft requirement which in turn gives good yields, and good savings... and is kinder to the soil and your pocket.

I see.........

yep - on soils that can het away with that (light / medium following long transition to notill / raised on content)

in other situations you may not always get away with that however

all about the right tool(s) for the job

our Co is brilliant in wet & low trash conditions, avatar is better when dry or high trash
 

Warnesworth

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Chipping Norton
yep - on soils that can het away with that (light / medium following long transition to notill / raised on content)

in other situations you may not always get away with that however

all about the right tool(s) for the job

our Co is brilliant in wet & low trash conditions, avatar is better when dry or high trash
Thank you.
I notice you have specifically mentioned light / medium textured soil,
So why won't your setup work on heavy soils, in your opinion?
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Thank you.
I notice you have specifically mentioned light / medium textured soil,
So why won't your setup work on heavy soils, in your opinion?


I've had situations in the past even on our easy soil types when we could simply not get the coulter in the ground, easy to forget after a few wet seasons but when the ground dries out it gets very hard and if not cultivated to loosen then you are reliant upon coulter pressure to get your consistent seed depth into any moisture etc - that means you need weight and a nice straight disc, stuff like the Novag / cross slot comes into its own in such situations IMO but at a price and HP requirement of the course and sadly I didn't have the luxury of such an option

Also in our early years of no-till the slot was not always easy to close behind drills like the 750a (avatar is v similar really) - if a wet spell followed after drilling that was less than ideal. I think this would have been another place where that CS coulter design would have been beneficial had it been available to me at the time

These issues are a much bigger problem on not so easy soil types and why some think that no-till simply can't work (consistently) for them on "heavy" land - I've got away with it on our soil type by waiting for better conditions and/or strapping weight to drills like out 750a or making other modifications


The CO is great in the wet or where hairpinning could cause major agronomical headaches, but does move more soil, lacks consolidation (slugs !!) and can't cope with anything like the amount of cover crop or previous crop residue that a disc drill can

There is no single drill that is ideal in all situations, its not surprising to me that so many no-till farmers end up becoming drill collectors or modifying them to suit !!
 
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Neddy flanders

Member
BASE UK Member
You asked me that question on twitter, I told you to phone me, but to date I've not heard from you so either the problem isn't too bad, or you don't want to hear my answer....
Simple answer, a competitive crop is essential for blackgrass suppression, you wont get a good competitive crop DD'ing wheat in Nov.
@Warnesworth sorry, I've had Covid-19 for 4 weeks in the middle of Harvest. My main tractor and combine driver walked out and ive ended up doing the last 1500acres of Combining on my own. My brain is a bit addled. Ill ring you tomorrow, i really would like to talk to you. Mike
 

Hammer

Member
Location
South Norfolk
Wheat into rape stubble, drilled 23 Sept, Virkar Dynamic 25cm spacing
CBD58222-38ED-4E03-991A-55C44D8BF7B7.jpeg
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Wheat into rape stubble. 22nd September (picture taken about 6 days ago I think)
 

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E_B

Member
Location
Norfolk
Which begs the question, why that wide? Guessing Claydon on narrow point?

BB

Yep, Mzuri on narrow points. Just an experiment on the headlands of a couple of fields. Sowing wheat after grass and I don't like the job the dual coulters do into clay turf, so I put the single coulters on and cross drilled them. But for the headlands I just sowed full rate once because I ran out of patience mainly. Will be interesting to see.

From what I remember I think Mzuri trialled some wide row wheat a few years ago and it didn't do that badly, but that was hybrid wheat I think.
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Which begs the question, why that wide? Guessing Claydon on narrow point?

BB

a LARGE reason for “why that wide” in an Australian situation is for trash flow from the previous crops residue.

Zero till is pretty much the default / standard farming system here & a crucial part of that is leaving as MUCH of the previous crop residue / stubble & groundcover as we can, to protect the soil & conserve moisture.

So - zero till machines here, right from the early home made / modified cultivators in the late 70’s through to the latest hundreds of thousands of $$$$ machines, all have wide row spacings for maximum trash flow.

Also, if you are running independent / parallelogram type row units at anywhere from $2000 - $5000 per row unit, over a 12 metre / 18 metre or wider machine, row spacing makes a significant difference to the cost ( & weight ) of the planter . . .
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Durum, on 300 mm spacings ( a contractor did it for me this year as I ran out of time. My usual spacing is 333mm, re my previous post about 1 metre summer crops. TBH, we don’t stress too much about row spacings - it’s more about fitting into machine configurations or trash flow than being pedantic about 10 mm extra wider or narrower ), planted at 50 kg / ha seed
12884AE0-C404-465D-9671-4DF5DF5ECA6D.jpeg

3 metre spray rig tracks
 

Spencer

Member
Location
North West
Yep, Mzuri on narrow points. Just an experiment on the headlands of a couple of fields. Sowing wheat after grass and I don't like the job the dual coulters do into clay turf, so I put the single coulters on and cross drilled them. But for the headlands I just sowed full rate once because I ran out of patience mainly. Will be interesting to see.

From what I remember I think Mzuri trialled some wide row wheat a few years ago and it didn't do that badly, but that was hybrid wheat I think.
Interested to see how it does. I’m of the same opinion, the band coulters don’t do great on clay turf. Planning on trying some 333 spacing spring wheat 🤔
 

E_B

Member
Location
Norfolk
PXL_20220413_102915690.jpg


33cm wheat on a headland. Think I'd be happy to do a whole field like this in future, rather than cross drill it at half rate again. Will see if it yields noticeably less than the rest of the field though.
 

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