Quick update

Here are some photos taken a couple of weeks ago , will get some later ones soon,
The field ha received a further 40 kg of N as liquid foliar applied with a product called LessN.

It has also been sprayed for Charlock and has a fungicide , growth reg , and magnesium and manganese .

The clover doesnt seem to be growing , mind you its only had one rain, 20mm.

Emergence of wheat

Its up, it roared out of the ground 10 days ago and keeps going , its had its first dose of N 80kg N/ha.
we need to find a source of humic granules in the UK ,

Drilling wheat and clover.

Last Wednesday we sprayed off the oats ( which had been hammered by the cold winter) , the black grass which seemed to have come from no where and all the other odd weeds that were growing quite merrily.
The next question is what to do? do we cultivate or attempt to direct drill. We chose the latter and used our Weaving tine drill .
For the direct drill purist this isnt strictly direct drilling as we had moved the soil in the autumn when we had drilled the oats but it worked so thats fine.
We drilled on Thursday 24th March (after subsoiling the tramlines ). with 180 kg/ha of ACBarrie spring red wheat , which will be grown on contract for Gleadells on their RHM contract for UK bread .
According to the great and good this wheat gets full of disease, grows very tall, gets more disease and then falls over ,and doesnt yield and we want to try and grow it with less fungicides. Oh well we`ll see.
After drilling we rolled it in , with 12m rolls.
The following day we spread on 10kg/ha of red clover(we are giving theclover thing another go) with the quad bike , which was very easy and then rolled it in at angle to the previous days rolling .
We now wait for rain .
PS it rained today .

No rules and no idea?

Its been a while and we have made some decisions , we as you know will plant Spring red wgeat ACBarrie, which i am told is a short season growing crop 90-100 days.We will try to keep it weed free(ish) clean(ish) and above all upright , apprently its tall and likes to fall over.
Our biggest choice though is to persevere with undersowing clover , so we plan to undersow at the same time as drilling red clover.With the plan to leave this to grow and then direct drill into it next year with a 3rd spring wheat .

I have been asked what i am trying to achieve with this project and sometimes it escapes me , but as general rule it goes something like this.

In 2007 we ordered a massive ammount of chemical early to catch the right prices and it duly arrived by the palletful .Unloading one of these pallets i got thinking and i came to the concluson that modern arable agriculture although profitable is not farming. It is in effect chemical application with cost plus as a benefit , we have lost some of or are in danger of losing some of our skills as farmers .i spoke to my father and he agreed but added in the caveat that this utopia i was dreaming about was bloody hard work and prone to massive weed problems .He remembers poor crops,total failures,weed infestation , couch grass ,inter row hoeing, singling sugar beet need i go on ?
So was there an alternative way just as profitable, with less cost , but less risk, thats what we are trying to do.
My first recourse was to the internet and organic farming , blimey its a longer list of what you should and should not do than ever i thought and i came to the conclusion that it was just a way of marketing food (better quality or not) and i left it at that.
A year later i heard about black grass resistance to Atlantis ,new strains of yellow rust, NVZ for specific water catchment areas specifically resevoirs, and for the first time i can remember , no prospect of new chemistry to get us out of the hole, well just one GM but we are still waiting for that one and as yet i havent seen big yields from GM just reduced use of certain pesticides.
So i revisted the internet and came across what is technically termed Biological farming, its a mixture of everything because there are no rules , this in turn led me to Australia thats another story and made a decision to do something different .
Thats what we are doing , something different no rules, probably no idea. just seeing if we can do something different , sometimes with less (chemicals) sometimes with more (nutrients) .
Thats where we are today , the oats should have gone on earlier but they didnt , so are not so big as i would like , but the soil structure is wonderfully friable , ive been digging holes with Neil and Roger, which is great fun.
That has come back the ideas, people asking me questions, ( why dont you put a bit of cheeky bravo on).
So as i started we are technically winging it , but its very interesting/

Oats and stuff

Went for a wander this afternoon with camera.The oats are comng through along with every thing else , but we have a covering , the soil is lovely and friable, the pass with drill in the autumn acted like a shallow cultivation and mixed some of the straw in which the worms are loving.
The wheat seed has arrived so we are ready to drill when we want but i dont think we will go much before early March .
Our aim is to grow it along similar lines to that we did last year to reduce chemical inputs and use more nutrition , my only thought is on the Nitrogen front we may have to compromise on this as we cannot afford to miss protein levels.

Spring wheat news

We have rightly or wrongly decided this years wheat crop will be AC Barrie the Canadian red wheat , so we will wait for the soil to warm up , spray off the oats and black grass which is germinating nicely at the moment and direct drill .
Ideally I would like to sow with fertiliser like I did last year , any ideas.
Photos to follow

Happy new year

A liitle article I read thought it might make some interesting reading,.
http://www.soilminerals.com/AgricolaI.htm

I will take some photos of the field today and get them posted.