whats shaking

[eppie]

Hey guys,

Are you 'bush hogging' the harvested wheatland, to chop the stubble and straw remains some more, or are you chopping and shredding the unused rough land to get rid of the weed before it spreads seed with the wind ?

We usually shred the remaining grass on the land when the cattle and horses leave that piece of land. We use mowers similar to the bush hog.

[Woodbeef]

Hey pudding,

It gets a tad bit sticky around here from time to time.

Naw,ain't chasing the wife around. She headed up to the NWT for a couple of years looking for work.

[pudding]

Renze

we leave the wheat stubble as it lies or stands

we also have a shelborne renyalds stripper header which leaves the whole stalk behind......standing

standing straw is easier to plant than flat matted stuff.......a lot of planters just ride out of the ground

to see a pic of a stripper header go here

www.farmphoto.com/homestead/message.asp?mid=7085

laters

pudding

[eppie]

Thanks for the link, Pudding.

I have seen an experimental stripper in 1989 on a photo of the Silsoe agricultural university England or so.

Since then, i never heard about them anymore. At that time, they said the capacity doubles when using the stripper head. We dont see them in the Netherlands. Practically all straw is baled and sold here, and we dont use direct sowing, unless for "green fertilizer" sowing.
(i mean wheat or lupine is sowed in autumn, and plowed under in spring to serve as fertilizer for the next crop, the wheat or lupine is not harvested.)

What is the official English word for "green fertiliser"

Renze.

[Si]

Renze I've never heard of this practise in the UK sometimes we undersow crops with turnips or fodder beet to feed the sheep in winter, but not a crop to plough in for fertiliser.
Cheers
Simon

[Red_Painter]

Way back in the late 50's before use of anhyrdous amonia here, farmers used to grow sweet clover, sown with spring grain and plowed the following spring, or austrian winter peas were planted and plowed under the next spring for fertilizing purposes. The plowed under crop was referred to as green manure. Southeastern states used to grow cover crops in the winter due to the heavy rains and possible soil erosion is my understanding. Possibly wheat is grown as a cover crop on the high plains for some cotton ground.

[pudding]

yes wheat is our 'cover crop'

each year farms decide after the winter whether the crop is going to be any good.....and farm it, our cultivate it in........

but on this farm........we harvest it each year

wheat is a good cover crop round here........ya can kill it with herbicides quiet easy

where as ryegrasses etc as a cover crop can be a nusance.,.....hard to control

a division of the buiness i work in sells a lot of anhydrous........half our farm uses it..........(the southern farms)......but up here in the northern farms we don't.....we use liquid nitrogen (30-0-0) instead.....usually spray it on with pre emergent chemicals in corn at 50 gallon to the acre (lots of trips with the terra gator!)

Renze......the stripper headers we have here are english.......probably like the one you saw.....the capacity doubles because the mill of the combine (drum type or conventional combine type)....is not having to deal with the straw as much.............there is a higher % of grain going in the machine


green fertiliser........well wheat is kinda like that here....in kentucky, US....in New Zealand, some organic farms grow lupins to work back in like you do.......some non organic farmers growing corn etc, use ryegrasses as a cover crop and a green fertiliser, this is because all feilds are fenced at home, and farmers then have the option of fattening (finishing) animals for winter markets

the last farm i worked on in NZ was different again........it grew a lot of grass seed, and wheat and barley, all up the farm had heaps of different crops to grow in a field rotation, this allowed better weed control, we grew brassicas (turnips, canola, radish?), cereals (wheat and barley), legumes (white clover), and grass species (turf, annual, perenial, fescue etc)

this green fertiliser topic is interesting and so varied...........not only does it vary by climate.........but also government!.........we have fields here in kentucky with green strips in them, we are paid not to farm them........!!!!! go figure!!!.......go the subisidies!

laters

pudding

[HPP]

To me "green fertilizer" should be the type of crop that sort of collects nitrogen from the air. I know there is a name for this type of plants but I don´t know the english name for it. Talking about crops like lupins, clover, peas a.s.o.

[eppie]

Yes, organic farmers here sow clover, since in vlover roots, there is a bacteria or so, that absorps nitrogen from the air. It is getting more and more common here, also with non-organic farmers, to sow about 15% with grass seed when renewing grassland.

At here, we can get subsidies when we sow wheat on the maize land, as green fertilizer. They say it holds minerals, so that it wont rain out to lower soil layers, where drinking water comes from.

[HPP]

Here, in the southernmost part of Sweden, as you can tell from Laapa´s postings, greenpeas are being harvested.
Since a few days back grass seed fields are being windrowed. Will be harvested after around 10 days laying in windrows on the field, if the weather holds. Looking good though, weatherforecast say that summer will come back to us beginning tuesday next week.
Today I learned that the first rapeseedfields are being windrowed. Still quite a few farmers around that don´t combine the rapeseed direct, without windrowing first.
Cutting the rape already now would be considered as at least 1-2 weeks earlier than normal.

[Jon Bos]

Green fertilizer, as I have been told, is a crop such as oats or rye, that you grow, then you put a lot of manure on it, and the crop turns the nutrients in the manure into more accessible forms for the next crop (ie corn).

Overseeding red clover into winter wheat is another practice that is done here - it follows similar thinking, except you don't put manure on it.

Both ideas are ways of giving more "stable" nitrogen (I can't think of which one is which), so that the nitrogen and organic matter can help enrich the soil. The jury is still out on red clover - it's not easy getting a catch 1/2 the time, and not a lot of people do the green manure thing here - they let the weeds grow, then cultivate it, and call that their green manure