Waiting patiently for rain
Growers need rainfall for winter crop planting
WINTER planting season is well and truly under way, but many growers are still waiting for the arrival of much-needed rainfall.
South Felton farmer Michael Meara usually grows chickpeas, barley and wheat during the winter season, but at the end of June he is still holding out for rain.
“We’re going to need a good three inches to think about anything really,” Mr Meara said.
“Last year I grew chickpeas, barley and a bit of wheat.
“I’ll put the same in this year if we get enough rain, otherwise I’ll wait over for the summer crop.”
Mr Meara said the Felton area had a fairly long winter planting season and he could hold out as late as July through to early August.
“It’s dry and it’s a worry, but I’ve had a reasonable summer crop so I’m not too concerned,” he said.
“But if it continues into summer, I’ll be worried.
“The forecast isn’t looking too good at the moment.”
Senior agronomist Paul McIntosh said the prime planting time for winter crops was from May to June.
“However in the past we have planted crops in late June-July,” he said.
“In some cases we have even planted as late as August.”
Mr McIntosh said the disadvantage of late planting was it risked subjecting the winter crops to warmer temperatures, however there were still some advantages.
“Wheat and barley don’t like temperatures above 30 degrees maximum. They will develop their best yields in a cool spring,” he said.
“Last year we planted in April-May and we got hit with some frosts. This year we’re probably going to be subject to warmer springs.
“The advantage of planting later is there is less risk of frost damage to the reproduction stage of wheat barley and chickpeas.”
Mr McIntosh said late plantings could still produce a significant yield.
“I had one grower who planted Seamer chickpeas in July and yielded 2-3 tonnes per hectare, which is a pretty handy yield,” he said.
“It’s not ideal by any stretch of the imagination planting in July, but we can do it.”
This year has had a large increase in dry plantings, according to Mr McIntosh.
“Some people have planted dry. It’s the biggest dry planting we’ve seen in the Northern River, ever,” he said.
“You can do it with wheat and barley but you can’t really do it with chickpeas. It might get you into trouble where it brings the seed up and then it dies, or it might be the best idea since sliced bread.
“Most people haven’t planted yet, most people are waiting patiently for that late rainfall. They’re waiting to see what rain they get and what paddocks they can plant – if they can plant any.
“There is mass black soil out there, there aren’t many crops around at the moment.”
Mr McIntosh said there were agronomic and economic reasons to plant a winter crop.
“There are agronomic reasons for the stubble from the wheat or barley crops, and then the cash flow from the winter crops,” he said.
“You’ve got to be thinking a bit further ahead than, ‘Oh it’s too late to plant, we’ll just wait for a summer crop.’
“You’ve got to survive until summer and you’ve got to have some stubble so any summer storms that come don’t just wash the soil straight into the river.”
THERE is plenty of talk that many of us have missed the winter planting time due to the dry weather.
I disagree with that general sentiment of it being too late to plant a winter crop.
The rain from this past week has been disappointing for sure, however it is only June and last year our flowering and grain filling crops got slammed with frost in late August and early September.
Add that to the dry conditions of the 2017 winter and it was not a good result for many farming enterprises.
The winter of 2018 is a long way from over and I can recall myriad examples where southern Queensland folk planted cereal crops and then went straight to the Royal Exhibition in Brisbane.
I can also say that chickpeas planted by several farmers in late June and July in southern and central Queensland for the past two years have yielded pretty well.
What I mean by pretty well is well over two tonne per hectare and even up to three tonne per hectare for a block of the new Seamer chickpea variety in 2017.
Chickpea flowers can abort or become sterile when the critical mean or average daily temperature gets below 15C, and if little to zero soil moisture is left then that crop is not going to recover.
As I recall, researchers from DAF did three times of sowing in 2016 in the three main areas of chickpea growing in Queensland. They planted chickpea blocks in May, June and July at Hermitage centre in Warwick, at a farmers’ trial site at Warra and in Emerald.
Now, the eventual yields of these trial areas were all very close and were useful yields as well. Not surprising to me, as the year before I had at least a dozen calls from farmers wanting to let their volunteer chickpea crop keep flowering and podding in December and harvest them in February.
OK, so much for chickpeas, and as I as always say, keep in touch with your pulse marketers before you plant a seed.
On to wheat and barley options. I will make the statement that everyone has different reasons or pressures to either continue to plan to plant a winter cereal or put the planting cue in the rack and prepare for summer.
Agronomic pressure like the desire for a good amount of wheat or barley stubble to provide fallow protection through our stormy summer.
Other pressures like having a cash flow coming in before Christmas. The pressure risk of maybe having the whole farm under a summer crop, that we have no guarantee it is going to rain enough for that possibility.
So planting a winter cereal in the later planting stages of the window has been done many times through the years. You just have to follow a few simple rules to achieve a reasonable result.
First is your planting rate, and everyone has their own rate for early plants, however it gets a bit head-scratchy as the wintertime progresses.
My own thoughts are to have more than 100 up to even 150 plants established per square metre from now on in dryland situations, and the reason is for the possible reduced tillering capability of our cereal plants.
So we still need as many grain heads per square metre as we can, and that means putting in extra planting seed per square metre. It could also be a yield benefit to have narrower row spacings for these bigger populations, as I have observed in the past.
Also, winter weed control could be horrendously difficult with wide rows and few cereal plants per square metre. That is a bad combination for later sowing times in this age of herbicide resistance, so maybe you should consider reducing or narrowing your row spacings.
Nutrition at planting time like some extra starter fertiliser is also important, particularly if changing to narrower rows.
So on one hand we have chickpeas that dislike a cool spring (less than 15C mean) and on the other hand we have wheat and barley that will have reduced yields due to a warm spring. By warm, I mean that maximum temperatures over 35C and minimum temperatures over 15C can impact unfavourably on your cereal grain yield in its reproductive stages.
Where are you in this debate? Only you and your agronomist can figure out all your angles – both agronomic and personal risk or reward level – of continuing plans to plant a winter crop.