Seeding begins

This year we started seeding on the 5th May, Having not had the best opening rains. 19mm fell around the 24th April, then we had 4mm on the 2nd May. We have been minimum till for the last 4 years, and have burnt no paddocks this year. Seeding directly into unslashed standing stubble. We are not taking any chances with the mice this year, as we can see plenty of activity in most of the paddocks. So they are all getting baited at 1 Kg/ Ha behind the seeder. We have sown all the canola and one paddock of JNZ wheat.


Snail bait spreader being used behind seeder for mousebait

                                 We are sowing 284Ha to Wheat ( Gladius and JNZ)
                                                                   272Ha to Barley ( Commander and Fleet)
                                                206 Ha to Canola (44Y84CL)
                                         45Ha to Peas ( Twilight)

We are not sowing any lentils this year as we have problems growing them at our home farm as we have Namoi vetch issues, and at our other block they are not fitting into the rotation, Im happy about this as the Price on offer is not great for lentils, and the Canola price is excellent at the moment.
We usually try and keep the rotations to one third wheat, one third Barley, and one third break crop, this year it has worked spot on.

Snail bait is getting put out tomorrow and after we finish the paddock we are on tonight, we are going to stop and wait for the forecast rain of 1-5 mm ( fingers crossed) it is starting to get very dusty out there. This is actually the first time since I have been on the farm that we have had to stop because of lack of moisture in the seed bed.

The darker area on the right hand side of the  hill is the

grape marc

Something new that we are trying this year is to put more organic matter in the soil through spreading Grape Marc. It is a by product of the grape harvesting industry. Basically what the grape harvesters spit out the back. We were given the analysis of it from Tarac in Nurioopta and it had plenty of organic matter  plus some nitrogen, It is free so we picked up two semi loads of it and spread it on some of the worst hills on the farm.

Well here's hoping for some good rain this weekend