Ian Pigott
Ian Pigott
Ian Pigott farms 690ha
(1700 acres) of owned,
rented, share-farmed and
contract-farmed land in
partnership with his father
from Thrales End,
Harpenden, Herts. Wheat,
oilseed rape, spring barley,
beans and peas are the main
crops on the flinty,
medium clay soils
DURING harvest my inquisitive young nephew came to the conclusion that if each grain of wheat was worth 0.1p farming would not be too bad.
If I had a penny for every slug in our crops now it would not be too bad either.
As expected wheat following oilseed rape was badly grazed but more surprisingly fields that grew oilseed rape two years ago also suffered. Thiodicarb at half to full rate is the current policy, with repeats where necessary. As one of my neighbours commented, running them over with the ATV might be as effective and a damn site cheaper.
We have applied Avadex (tri-allate) on fields with the most severe blackgrass, planning to follow that up with an ipu/trifluralin mix of 5 litres/ha and 2.3 litres/ha respectively or Hawk/Lexus (clodinafop-propargyl + trifluralin / flupyrsulfuron-methyl) at 2.5 litres and 20g/ha respectively.
The winter barley had Crystal (flufenacet + pendimethalin) at 4 litres/ha pre-emergence which we plan to follow with an ipu/trifluralin mix as soon as the land dries out. Light showers seem to be a thing of the past; 10-15mm is an "average shower" now and a set of Trelleborg tyres have been added to the wet weather gear to try to give us more windows for spraying.
This years shift to min-till establishment of oilseed rape has taught me a couple of lessons, the plough being replaced by Shakerator followed by light discs and drill, two passes with the discs then drill or simply broadcast seed by ATV.
Lesson one: chopped straw mops up available nitrogen so straw should have been removed and compound applied sooner. Lesson two: competition from volunteers is greater than with ploughing and Falcon (propaquizafop) should have gone on earlier. However, thanks to some kind weather I think we got away with it.
Now we have only beans left to drill. But there is no time to relax yet. As last year showed, blackgrass is far easier to control now than with a fire brigade treatment in spring. *
Ian Pigott learnt a couple of lessons about min-till oilseed rape establishment this autumn, but thinks he has got away with it. Elsewhere slugs and blackgrass are proving costly to control.