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Can you control blackgrass and establish a crop of winter beans for £20 per acre?

22/05/09

The ever increasing input costs of producing any arable crop these days has spurred on Boy Fenwick of Beelsby House in Lincolnshire, who farms a substantial acreage and also contracts several thousand more acres, to seriously look at ways of slashing costs and has come up with what looks like a winner. Using a Simba framed subsoiler with a Cousins razer ring packer at the rear, and having a row of smaller rigid tines which have a pipe attached to them for pneumatic delivery of seed and spaced at 14" widths which avoid the subsoiler slot, he has been able to direct drill both winter and spring beans for a cost of £20 per acre to customers.

This substantially reduces the cost of conventional sowing where ploughing, cultivations and drilling cost considerably more. The subsoiler works at about 14" depth while the smaller rigid tines are into the ground at a depth of 5" which is ideal for winter beans. He tries to avoid temptation to improve the seed bed by further cultivations as this can encourage more weeds especially in spring crops. The tilth created by this system leaves a reasonably rough surface which when weathered will make cultivations next autumn for wheat much easier providing the stubble is clean. The current crop was drilled starting 30th November. Late drilling in itself has an important effect as you start with less weeds and disease. Too early drilling can result in more chocolate spot, blackgrass and frost damage. The right soil structure, which is aided by the subsoiling, creates conditions that allow better straight tap root development. The joint operation of subsoiling and drilling is considered to be more beneficial to the land than padding with conventional machinery.

Boy likes to have the plough in once during a rotation and preferably after rape, as there is time to do something with the land at that time of year. The direct drilling of beans in the autumn extends the season and in the spring, his outfit pulled by a 280 horse power crawler was at work on spring beans at a depth of 2 to 3" in February, long before conventional systems are able to travel. This enables him to have some over wintered stubbles, which comply with ELS rules, whereas conventionally he would expect to have to plough if he wanted to work land in the spring. With this new method he is finding more flexibility in rotational crop options, where if it is too late to put in rape he can switch to beans.

Provided the stubble is cleaned up with glyphosate before drilling, this way of managing the drilling leaves a very clean stubble where ryegrass and blackgrass seeds are relatively undisturbed and as they are buried they are left to rot, so the are killed without the use of a chemical. With bad ryegrass and blackgrass problems, ploughing winter beans in, may still be an option, or ploughing to bury the infestation if a serious problem.

He does not roll behind the outfit so granted the crop looks a bit rough but the plant stand is phenomenal at a rate of 18 seeds per sqm for winter beans and 40 seeds per sqm for spring beans. He is not concerned about cosmetic effects. He does have some land in conventionally drilled and worked spring beans as a comparison which look neat and tidy but at a considerably higher outlay in both seed rate and cultivation costs.

He has only used *Stomp as a pre emergence weed control, which looks to be doing a good job, as there are a limited number of post emergence sprays to use on beans.

For further information please contact J K Senior & Sons.

* Stomp is a registered trademark of BASF.

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