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Sneeky's cropping season 2016

32K views 174 replies 27 participants last post by  sneeky 
#1 ·
Hi all,

Just thought I'd share this years cropping program. Hopefully this year doesn't follow the same pattern as the last few with horribly dry springs.

We currently have about 50% of our cropping country being fallowed (Hopefully for sorghum), 40% has been sown to canola and about 10% barley.









Good to see the tractor working hard putting in the canola!

 
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#2 ·
The canola below is 559TT. It was sown on the 21st of April at 2kg/ha with 60kg of MAP+2%Zn. Put down 1.5l Treflan and 2kg of Attrazine as pre-ems. Have just spread 300kg/ha of Urea on it in the last couple of days. Had a very nice rain of 50mm to wash it in :)

26th May


This is Compass barley sown on the 18th of May at 70kg/ha with 50kg/ha of MAP+2%Zn. Pre-ems were 1.5l treflan and 1.75l of Boxer gold, put down another 750ml of Boxer straight after sowing


27th May





Unloading Urea, Pretty nice price drop this year :)



 
#18 ·
The canola below is 559TT. It was sown on the 21st of April at 2kg/ha with 60kg of MAP+2%Zn. Put down 1.5l Treflan and 2kg of Attrazine as pre-ems. Have just spread 300kg/ha of Urea on it in the last couple of days. Had a very nice rain of 50mm to wash it in :)

26th May


This is Compass barley sown on the 18th of May at 70kg/ha with 50kg/ha of MAP+2%Zn. Pre-ems were 1.5l treflan and 1.75l of Boxer gold, put down another 750ml of Boxer straight after sowing


27th May





Unloading Urea, Pretty nice price drop this year :)



[/QUOTE

I didn't think you could put atrazine down on canola ground!? Is this a common practice there? I have always been under the impression atrazine would kill canola as we spray it on corn for that very reason.
 
#4 ·
With those units plus the N already in the profile I should have enough for a yield of 3.5t/ha or a bit more. Really trying to push the envelope with canola this year. Most of my canola is on heavy country that has been long fallowed. When planted it had around 200mm of PAW stored and if we had average rainfall I should be around 400mm of PAW for the growing season. If I work on a WUE of 10kg/mm/ha that should mean there is enough water there for a 4t/ha crop. Not saying that I will get there at all, but just cant help but think we have been under achieving with canola yields and my first plan of attack is feeding it enough N. It makes me feel a bit better about this plan of attack when I read trial work currently being done with N use in canola. Time will tell if I'm being a moron or not!
 
#5 ·
Nice job sneeky, very informative!

Keep us apprised of the progress, now that you have this great start!:)

What's Boxer Gold and Boxer?

I find all your yield reasoning pretty sound, not a moron at all!
Hopefully the weather gods will smile on it.

How much a tonne for "cheap" urea and how much can your pictured unit haul?
 
#6 ·
Keep us apprised of the progress, now that you have this great start!:)

What's Boxer Gold and Boxer?

I find all your yield reasoning pretty sound, not a moron at all!
Hopefully the weather gods will smile on it.

How much a tonne for "cheap" urea and how much can your pictured unit haul?
Will keep it updated Don, Just hope its not like my previous threads where the season has turned off!!!

Boxer Gold and Boxer is the same thing. 800 g/L PROSULFOCARB 120 g/L S-METOLACHLOR, Using it to control ryegrass. It will control wild oats and a few other things as well. I split the application like that to get better control of weeds in the furrow. You can't put the full rate on after sowing as it will have a pretty bad effect on the barley. http://www.herbiguide.com.au/Labels/METOPROS_61234-54354.PDF

The Urea cost us about $450/t delivered. Think it may still be going down as well. When you say unit I'm guessing you are talking about the truck? If so, that is a B-Double and it carts around 40t
 
#11 ·
I ran out of urea with a few hectares to go on the canola. I will take one when we put that little bit out. I actually didn't get to see it either as I was out at Walgett planting but apparently it did look like a little hail storm went through!!
 
#17 ·
There is quite a few laws regarding knocking down trees here, not 100% sure of the ins and outs of it all. I really do like having trees, just don't really like them in the cropping areas. I do plan to plant a lot more trees but have them in shelter belts and corridors around edges of paddocks and then remove the trees in the middle. Just need time to do it!

Nice pics...what spacings you on mate?

Ant...
Thanks Ant. We are on 12inch spacing here.

Pete.
 
#36 ·
Haha wheely!, Really not helping our image :22:

Ah, you tricked me, thought you'd be straight cutting!
Is canola generally swathed now?
What swather and header you running now then?
Most canola is still put into a windrow. I don't have a swather myself, I get a contractor to do it. He has some sort of macdon with a 30ft front. For my cereals I'm still running a 45ft Midest front on the 580R.

OSR is very responsive to sulphur, you might find that you get a response if you begin to push your yields higher.

300kg/ha of urea, so about 138kg/ha N? That would be at the lower end for us here on OSR. If you knew you were going to have the rain for it, I would split your application 50:50- first go about the time your plants were above, the rest 4 or so weeks later. Or is this spring canola?
I agree that if we can push the yields higher then I will have to start looking at sulphur and most likely other elements as well.

That is correct, 138 units of N. I do a soil test for N levels before each crop now. With that amount urea it should take my total N in my canola paddocks to somewhere between 280 and 300 units of N. I am working on 80 units of N/t for canola which should give me enough for around 3.5t/ha.

Nearly all canola varieties over here are spring types. In terms of timing for the urea it can get tricky. The research I have been reading suggests that timing makes next to no difference in canola and that the most important thing is the amount. I don't have my own spreader at this stage which makes it hard to split applications even if I wanted to. I am planning to put around 250kg/ha of urea on the barley this year. That's the one that is really worrying me because that's normally a good way to make it all fall over and lodge.

Anyone put in fans beans this year you area sneaky..

We combined a few feilds in geelong last year that blew my mind after combing my whooping 5 bu/ac crop.. I bet his yeild was almost 60/ac and grew well over a meter tall..

Much different climate at geelong thou
Guessing you are talking about Faba beans bussard? Not much is grown around my area at all. I bit further west they grow quite a few, not sure how many are in this year due to the dry start early in the sowing window out there.
 
#34 ·
OSR is very responsive to sulphur, you might find that you get a response if you begin to push your yields higher.

300kg/ha of urea, so about 138kg/ha N? That would be at the lower end for us here on OSR. If you knew you were going to have the rain for it, I would split your application 50:50- first go about the time your plants were above, the rest 4 or so weeks later. Or is this spring canola?
 
#35 ·
Anyone put in fans beans this year you area sneaky..

We combined a few feilds in geelong last year that blew my mind after combing my whooping 5 bu/ac crop.. I bet his yeild was almost 60/ac and grew well over a meter tall..

Much different climate at geelong thou
 
#42 ·
I did not know you were 500 ASL, sneeky. That would make a huge difference to your yield potential compared to here. Your Sorghum yield should be impressive there too. Spring/summer heatwaves can kill us here, but you would know all about that at your Walgett property, which would be even more extreme than us.

I do not use APSIM. I am not that sophisticated.:)
 
#45 ·
This is how you do it properly. It is very involved.

https://www.apsim.info/Portals/0/APSoil/Estimating%20PAWC-a%20methodology_Ver1.1.pdf

I have not bothered to do that, it is something that I would like to do just out of interest. Instead, there is a great database of soils here in Australia where they have already done this work and worked out a particular soil's water holding ability. So from that list of soils I pick one that has similar qualities and then go from there. There are some basic rules of thumb though when it comes to estimating how much moisture you have been able to hold onto over a fallow period. That figure is around 20% of rainfall received is stored as available water. There are many things that can influence this figure as in soil type, individual rainfall amounts and rain rates, ground cover and how many weeds there were in the fallow. When you start getting your head around all this stuff you start to get a picture about what is going on. A tool a lot of us use over here is a moisture probe. This is just a metal rod with handles that we use to push in to the soil and get an idea of how far down the moisture is and from that try and work out how much PAW there is. This will differ from soil type to soil type. I would seriously suggest having a read of that material if you are interested.

What is that, where do you get it? Do you always use it? What does it helps with?
tThanks
It is a yield simulator. The actual program is called APSIM. The raw program is quite difficult to use. What you see in the photo I posted was APSIM running as a part of some farm management software I use called ProductionWise. It is actually an amazing program which takes into account soil type, different crops and is variety specific, soil moisture, rainfall, temperature, nutrition etc. I have found it to be pretty darn accurate. You can use it to run simulations on different fertiliser rates and outcomes.

Getting right into all this soil moisture stuff like PAW and then WUE's of different crops has seriously altered the way I farm. When you start doing the numbers on this sort of stuff it can paint a very different picture to what you thought was happing. For example, summer crops were hardly grown in this area but after I chrunched the numbers it actually turn out that this area is very suited to summer crops, maybe even more suited to summer crops than winter crops. Grew some sorghum last year in one of our driest summers we have had since we have been here and the result was very pleasing, especially considering the dryness and heat of last summer.



 
#46 ·
Below is some 650tt Canola. sown at 2.1kg/ha with 50kg MAP+2%Zn. Also had 2kg Attrazine and 1.5l Treflan. Was sown on the 27th of April. This is some of the canola that we have on long fallow, hence why I am trying the longer season variety 650tt. It had its 300kg/ha dose of Urea the other day.

8th June



I have been planting for a friend of mine up at Walgett recently. It has been absolutely shockingly dry up there over the last few years. He sent me through this photo after the recent rain. Very happy to finally see some moisture!!!

 
#47 · (Edited)
July Update

It has been quite wet! We have had 72mm in May followed by a further 127mm in June. We are not over wet here unlike a lot of areas a bit further west of us.

Barley is coming along nicely. It had a 250kg/ha dose of urea about 2 weeks ago and is now tillering. Also gave it a hit of 4l/ha of cropping zinc.



The pre-ems (treflan and Boxer Gold) have work really well here. Has stopped a lot of ryegrass from coming up. Here is some ryegrass that has germinated but the Boxer Gold seems to be doing its job well.



Below is the APSIM prediction for some of the barley.

 
#49 ·
650TT Canola. This is 10 days behind the other canola but also seems to be slower in getting going. Guess that makes sense seeing as though its a longer season variety. Have also hit this with cropping zinc and grass sprays. Will be interesting to see how long it is before we see the first buds in this variety.



 
#50 ·
44Y84 Clearfield Canola. This is the best looking canola we have at the moment. Again, hit this with cropping zinc and grass spray. Also hit it with the on duty chemical. There is also some white leaf spot in it and it is starting to bud up as well.






 
#52 ·
Cheers mate, No chickpeas in. I have never grown them here. They can be a bit troublesome I think in our generally longer and cooler finish. Must say though that I have been a little tempted to give them a go considering the prices for them over the last couple of years.
 
#54 ·
Thanks gv. As discussed earlier in the thread I have put enough N on it to achieve over 3.5t/ha in theory......

Over 2.5t/ha field average - Pretty darn happy. :54::54:
Over 3t/ha average - Out comes the happy dance!!! :30::30:
3.5t/ha average - :6::6::6::6::6::6::6::6::6::6::6::6:
 
#60 ·
Last season I grew a TT variety (Gem) and clear field 44y84. All through the year I would have put money on the 44y84 performing better but the Gem out yielded it and there was no significant difference in oil. Both between 44% and 45%.

44 grew about a foot taller so was more difficult to windrow as well.

This year I've got Gem and Bonito which are both TT varieties so will be interesting to see how they both go. I've got nothing against CL varieties but probably need to grow shorter varieties, and with the higher price for seed they need to outperform conventional and TT varieties. But they do give another option with chemicals.
 
#61 ·
That's interesting, thanks nhinoz. Absolutely agree with you about breeding shorter varieties. Did your season shut off big time last year like it did here? I often think that the varieties that are no where near as showy with big growth achieve a better WUE when it gets a bit dry. I harvested some 555TT last year for a neighbour and was quite impressed, I dint have any canola in last year.
 
#62 ·
I had a pretty in depth chat about yield with my rep this year before seeding. It was his feeling that those 70+ bu plus crops can probably only be grown here in Canada up north along the treeline, unless you get some unusual conditions. It just doesn't get as hot up there in the day in July and cools off nicely just about every night. Last summer we had forest fires with smoke which blunted a lot of day time heat too.
 
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