Will No till put paid to the plough ? asks a piece in the FT.

[Simon Chiles]

Sorry but your statement before basically says that if you can not DD your management skills are $hit£...

I said that there wasn’t a soil type that couldn’t successfully be direct drilled and that any failures ( including all the ones I’ve had ) are always down to management and not soil type. I didn’t say that I condoned ploughing. You might have very valid reasons for doing it such as not having 100k for a drill, you just enjoy it ( like I do ) or you want to incorporate muck or weeds.

 

[Simon Chiles]

Two words

Blackgrass
Brome

I am awaiting delivery of a new plough.
Combine yield meter will go from 4 t/ha where there is blackgrass to 12 t/ha where there is none (Lexion so reduce by 30%) Can I afford NOT to plough?? I can't afford BG, ergot, massive chem stacks, too many spring crops, and late drilling disruption.

Walked over a mid October drilled 3rd wheat that had been ploughed. BG was dreadful. Saw 3 BG plants, one where the plough landwork met the headlands, one arising from under a clod, and one in a hare scrape. Min till or DD would have been a disaster in that field or we would be growing a much less profitable spring crop.
I intend to rotationally plough 20/25% or on a need to basis.

Ploughing bad black grass or brome fields isn’t a bad idea, I’ve done it once or twice but I had the view of never ploughing it again.
I think if you plough on a 20/25% basis it might not be successful as you’ll be digging up the seeds you’ve buried.
The late Jim Bullock had a field that he direct drilled for 8 years and had got on top of his grass weed problems. He had a particularly wet harvest and because he’d ruined his soil structure he ploughed the field and he said after he ploughed it his black grass problem re emerged. His conclusion was that he’d discovered that black grass seeds could survive at least 8 years of being buried.
We also had a field which had been direct drilled for years and didn’t have black grass until the government dug up the field to install a pipeline.

 

[L P]

It's a label, same as organic, same as regenerative, nothing more, was simply making the point that I challenge anyone to say his system is less sustainable than any other.

Our soils are in better condition than in living memory, organic and increasingly biodynamic, all ploughed. Suspect many would have a better bottom line if they remembered where they came from.

 

[Bury the Trash]

Ploughing bad black grass or brome fields isn’t a bad idea, I’ve done it once or twice but I had the view of never ploughing it again.
I think if you plough on a 20/25% basis it might not be successful as you’ll be digging up the seeds you’ve buried.
The late Jim Bullock had a field that he direct drilled for 8 years and had got on top of his grass weed problems. He had a particularly wet harvest and because he’d ruined his soil structure he ploughed the field and he said after he ploughed it his black grass problem re emerged. His conclusion was that he’d discovered that black grass seeds could survive at least 8 years of being buried.
We also had a field which had been direct drilled for years and didn’t have black grass until the government dug up the field to install a pipeline.

same with wild oats plough can be their partner in crime .

 

[Farma Parma]

I do find it strange that the DD fanatics think the rest of us farmers are useless and don't know what we doing.
I have no problem with DD if it works for them.

Just because not all of us follow the FASHION doesnt mean how we are doing it is anymore wrong neither

 

[Derrick Hughes]

thats a bit like saying no one would drill into a tarmac road neither isnt it ??? bit puzzled here.

No it's how ground handles water , and how it supports traffic,

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I see on another thread that @Kiwi Pete has been seeding the fields using nothing it will be interesting to see the results.

I still used cattle and a motorbike to help, but yeah, it is time that does it... and obviously, not cacking yourself when the seedheads appear

 

[Dead Rabbits]

I think many of you would appreciate Gary Zimmers work. Ignore the fact he is organic, he’s been at it a very long time and his knowledge of the soil and growing crops is vast. Don’t know if he plows but he does use tillage.

Something that has always struck me is UK and Europes use of the plow. You all must be a patient lot to be able to till a field 5 or six furrows at a time. I think I’d lose my mind!

 

[Derrick Hughes]

I think many of you would appreciate Gary Zimmers work. Ignore the fact he is organic, he’s been at it a very long time and his knowledge of the soil and growing crops is vast. Don’t know if he plows but he does use tillage.

Something that has always struck me is UK and Europes use of the plow. You all must be a patient lot to be able to till a field 5 or six furrows at a time. I think I’d lose my mind!

Never owned 5 ,most of my life it was 2

 

[Henarar]

I still used cattle and a motorbike to help, but yeah, it is time that does it... and obviously, not cacking yourself when the seedheads appear

Thats the trouble with these corn boys if they used some decent plants to start with they would not have this seeding crap every year to argue about as the plants would just grow back and if they did need some more seed just knock some out at harvest, non of this 100 grand drill crap to argue about.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

For an all grassland farm direct drilling is a vast improvement, if he can perfect it
The ability to introduce legumes and overseed silage leys so your fields don't have to be taken out of the system to long , you use less seed as you are keeping the productive grasses in place ,but introducing earlier Tertraploid grasses that will increase the feed value of your silage
Direct drilled land can carry stock a lot sooner and you keep the fertility in the top layers where its needed , a level field stays a level field and you have no more worries about stones when your mowing

 

[Will Blackburn]

I said similar to this the other day.
The arguments for no till till ploughing etc are all pointless.
We need to find away to allow us to drill earlier and stop all this f**king about in wet slop every autumn, it is not sustainable.

Like a lot of things it’s related to over emphasis on selection for yield. The easiest way whether deliberate or not to increase crop yield after increasing the harvest index is to extend the growing season. Quite different to France where they can often fit cover crops in between consecutive autumn sown crops.

 

[ajd132]

Like a lot of things it’s related to over emphasis on selection for yield. The easiest way whether deliberate or not to increase crop yield after increasing the harvest index is to extend the growing season. Quite different to France where they can often fit cover crops in between consecutive autumn sown crops.

I don't really understand what you mean?

 

[Will Blackburn]

If you’re harvesting wheat in September you’re less likely to be able to utilise the early drilling window.

 

[ajd132]

If you’re harvesting wheat in September you’re less likely to be able to utilise the early drilling window.

The Scot’s seem to be good at harvesting and drilling at the same time

 

[Derrick Hughes]

One thing that needs further exploring is drone seeding of cover crops into unharvested crops

 

[Vader]

Our soils are in better condition than in living memory, organic and increasingly biodynamic, all ploughed. Suspect many would have a better bottom line if they remembered where they came from.

Same, also getting better yields than before.

 

[som farmer]

I think many of you would appreciate Gary Zimmers work. Ignore the fact he is organic, he’s been at it a very long time and his knowledge of the soil and growing crops is vast. Don’t know if he plows but he does use tillage.

Something that has always struck me is UK and Europes use of the plow. You all must be a patient lot to be able to till a field 5 or six furrows at a time. I think I’d lose my mind!

l started off with a 2 furrow trailer plough, behind a Daisy Brown

now you could plough a 4ins depth with that, and make a smart job, it was great for building muscles up, yanking on the rope to lift the plough up. And yes it drove us mad, took ages to plough a field. The linkage ploughs were gratefully received, and 3 furrows. How time has changed.

one of the great things about the internet, you can see how other farmers work their land, on you tube, there are vids to watch, of any farming practices. You can see how others, abroad, manage the same types of soil, as ours. Its pretty obvious Europe, as @Dead Rabbits says, lags a long way behind others. If they can do it, so can we.

ploughing still has a place, but when farmers say, 'it won't work here', when there is loads of evidence, to show others managing perfectly well, on similar/same soils, never say 'can't'.

especially in central America, they had to stop routine ploughing, created the dust bowl, in which soil simply blew away, leaving the land basically unfarmable. Huge amounts of that land, is back in production, using cover crops, and non inversion cultivations, they have rebuilt top soil.

perhaps here in Europe, we never had to change, so ploughing is the go-to method. Its an interesting thread to follow, because others make it work well, and here, we don't.

for me, a mix of the 2, with emphasis on not ploughing, but its a free country, or is until defra decide to make us stop ploughing, in their drive towards regen farming So each of us, can decide on which method to use.

the arguments will still be happening for the next decade or two, l suspect.

 

[Two Tone]

Two words

Blackgrass
Brome

I am awaiting delivery of a new plough.
Combine yield meter will go from 4 t/ha where there is blackgrass to 12 t/ha where there is none (Lexion so reduce by 30%) Can I afford NOT to plough?? I can't afford BG, ergot, massive chem stacks, too many spring crops, and late drilling disruption.

Walked over a mid October drilled 3rd wheat that had been ploughed. BG was dreadful. Saw 3 BG plants, one where the plough landwork met the headlands, one arising from under a clod, and one in a hare scrape. Min till or DD would have been a disaster in that field or we would be growing a much less profitable spring crop.
I intend to rotationally plough 20/25% or on a need to basis.

I used to think I was in almost exactly the same boat as you.

We used to plough. We had some BG but it was controllable.
Then we went Min-till. Fine the 1st year but an ever increasing explosion of BG the more years we did it.
Went back to ploughing and got BG back under more control again. But the plough needed setting up really well each year.

Then we tried Direct Drilling.
I deliberately went for the least most soil disturbance drill I could find, but would still do a decent job of establishment.
IF you don’t disturb the soil, the BG stays asleep and you don’t have anything like the problems you used to have.
It is better than and certainly no worse than any other way of establishing a crop and controlling BG at the same time.

 

[Two Tone]

One thing that needs further exploring is drone seeding of cover crops into unharvested crops

It is being explored.
However our HSE is the biggest problem in the UK.
The rest of the world and especially China is way, way ahead of us with drone farming tech and making it work.

But our HSE say “No!”