Hard decision for cropping
NOT too many good crop photo options around at the moment, as the dry bites further into our farming and grazing land.
This old family rain gauge of mine, complete with the bit of wire, still works, as you can see, however there has been a big lack of rain again over our summer months.
We obviously need rain badly for a host of reasons throughout our eastern Australia farming regions.
Any late summer rainfall events, may not necessarily let us plant any useful summer grain crops now, however would let us plan our future cropping sequencing (crop rotation) and maybe get on top of a huge weed seed bank.
Many a time over the past 40 years have I witnessed a very dry period break with a big rain event and then become a widespread flood.
Paddocks without much cover get badly eroded and then suddenly become a mass of green.
Unfortunately much of that green could be useless weeds, however at least it is something growing and we so desperately need the rain.
True, many weed seeds sitting on the hot and dry surface do lose their viability or germination per cent and species like feather top rhodes (FTR) seeds sitting on the surface only maintain this viability claim for around 14 months or less. Many a paddock has been cultivated over the past 12 months and this potential burying action of weed seeds like FTR down to 10cm, is another method of reducing weed seed germination events.
This is all very good in summation, however as we all know there can easily be 30,000 viable seeds per FTR plant and you certainly cannot guarantee that all weed seeds may perish in our dry time or a cultivation event or two. So then you face the prospect of considering using a residual herbicide as a fallow spray like the Isoxaflutole product.
No doubt about its efficacy on many tough weeds like sowthistle (milkthistle), feather top rhodes and fleabane. Its 10-week minimum re-cropping interval to wheat or barley planting, plus the 100mm minimum requirement of rain you really need to occur, is certainly a risk for locking yourself in to some sort of winter cropping plan.
Chickpeas planting at some depth is obviously an option, however as we all know, growing chickpeas is easiest and best done on a large profile of sub-soil moisture.
I would also suggest that for the coming 2019 winter crop, many of us want to and need to plant a cereal grain crop. We have had some big and successful years of growing chickpeas, however we need the feed for livestock and some standing cereal stubble in our fallow grain growing blocks is very desirable. Plenty of hard decisions to make and with so little confidence in future weather predictions, I wouldn’t blame you for waiting it out, before any commitment to a herbicide residual in your farming system.