Jim Bullock
Jim Bullock
Jim Bullock farms 283ha
(700 acres) in partnership
with his parents and brother
at Mill Farm, Guarlford,
Malvern, Worcs. Two-thirds
is rented or contract farmed,
the rest owned. Cropping is
winter wheat, winter oilseed
rape and winter beans
ALL we need is one more dry day to complete drilling the winter beans.
The cereals are all drilled and well up and I am fretting because we havent managed to get all the spraying completed. Typical farmer, never content – this time a year ago we had hardly anything drilled!
With soil conditions so good at drilling time we have cut all wheat and barley seed rates to 150kg/ha (1.2cwt/acre), aiming to drill 300 seeds/sq m. Previously we have never dared cut rates using the lo-till system, having had three very difficult autumns in a row. Slug damage and poor establishment was always a worry but our soils have improved dramatically over the past three years, becoming far more friable, improving seed-to-soil contact and the reducing the slug problem. The only slug damage has been where volunteer oilseed rape was allowed to get too big before being sprayed off.
Ploughing does nothing to control blackgrass on our land. A field that was ploughed this autumn for the first time in four years has turned up a real blackgrass problem, while reduced tillage and stale seed-beds have reduced our blackgrass problems elsewhere.
However, I wish the same could be said for the meadow grasses. Wet weather and poor in-crop control has led to a real problem in some fields, particularly after oilseed rape. Our autumn spray programme will be targeting this weed with the use of Kerb (propyzamide) in oilseed rape, ipu/Stomp (pendimethalin) in barley and Lexus (flupyrsulfuron-methyl)/Stomp in wheat.
Our August sown oilseed rape is over a foot tall with up to 14 leaves – at this rate it will be in flower by Christmas. Such a forward crop means there are very few weeds to be found and hopefully we will get away with just a fungicide and insecticide in that crop this autumn, cutting our costs. If Mrs Beckett gets her way and abolishes all support we will have reduce all our costs dramatically. Lets hope the Europeans over-rule her. *