Before last year they hadn’t grown beet because they didn’t cultivate their 230ha boulders, not to mention losing valuable moisture before sowing.
“Cultivation’s a dirty word round here!”
By direct drilling, fodder beet’s become an option and Waller’s hopeful if they can make it work some of their direct-drilling clients in dairy and other livestock sectors will look at it.
“A lot of them would rather not work-up the ground but they’ve had to if they’ve wanted to try fodder beet. We’re hoping we can help them with that.”
Besides moisture and soil organic matter conservation, not to mention preserving the 3cm or so cap of topsoil that’s built up over the rocks in their paddocks over the years, Waller believes direct drilling should also cut herbicide costs.
“Nodding thistles love this light ground but since we’ve been direct drilling we’ve hardly had any.”
The paddock Waller’s beet is in was sprayed out of grass with glyphosate plus Hammer (carfentrazone-ethyl) before sowing, then a glyphosate, Nortron (metamitron) Goltix (ethofumesate) plus insecticide tank-mix, pre-emergence of the crop.
“Post-emergence it had one spray of Goltix-Nortron-Betanal and that was it. We didn’t worry about any Galant or anything,” Waller’s son-in-law who runs Waller Precision Spraying, James Taylor, said.
Before heavy rain in January they were reasonably pleased with the result despite a very dry spring limiting herbicide efficacy, but a 100mm-plus deluge on about January 20 prompted a late flush of weeds, fat-hen and nightshade in particular.
That’s spoiled the look of many a crop in the district, their direct-drilled beet included.
By direct-drilling beet farmercontractor Brian Waller’s left the stones and boulders undisturbed.
Inverary Station in mid Canterbury tried fodder beet for the first time last year with pleasing results but the loss of soil and some crop because of spring wind-blow prompted a switch to direct sowing this season.
“We ploughed and disc’d then it blew three times before the crop was big enough to stop it,” station manager Bert Oliver said.
“It was still an 18t/ha crop but there were patches where the wind funnelled that were bare and you can’t afford to be losing soil that’s taken thousands of years to build-up.”
Yearling cattle did 0.2kg liveweight (LW)/day better on average on the 12ha of beet than on kale, lifting over-winter growth rates to 0.65kg LW/day, so they were keen to grow more.
Direct sowing promised to solve the windblow risk so 22ha was sown with every other coulter on a Cross-Slot into sprayed-out pasture on the toughest country, and 32ha direct-drilled with a precision planting John Deere disc drill on the better ground.
Oliver said he was delighted with the results of both.
“Going on how last year’s crops did we’ll probably end-up with 20-22t DM/ha in the best paddocks and I’d guess the others will be around 18t/ha.”
The only problem’s been with 10ha of one 12ha Cross-Slot-sown paddock where nysius fly has wiped out the crop, despite repeated insecticides.
“It established fine but nysius [fly] ringbarked it and got inside the plants.”
Oliver speculated that continual reinvasion from neighbouring hill country, and possibly some resistance to the chemical could be why it was so bad.
Despite the insecticides none of the paddocks will have cost much more than $1500/ha and some will be nearer $1200/ha, he estimated.
“But we didn’t go direct drilling to save money. If we can establish this crop with the Cross-Slot there will be no restriction on where we can plant it and we can use it as a break crop on our hill country.”
Oliver said he was keen to try sowing barley as a cover crop that can be sprayedout once the beet was big enough to protect the soil. However, moisture loss through the barley was a possible downside.
“We’re a 40-inch rainfall area but it doesn’t always come at the right time. I gave this year’s paddocks a seven-week fallow between sprays prior to sowing to accumulate some moisture and have two cracks at the weeds.”
Only two in-crop herbicides have been needed compared to three in last year’s cultivated crops.
