The hardest part of direct drilling is getting used to doing very little cultivating after harvest while neighbours are working hard, says Northamptonshire farmer David Beesley.
Last autumn he was able to utilise this time by concentrating on other parts of his business, and leaving his new Mzuri drill parked up until it was needed at South Lodge, Ecton, Northampton. Once the drill – a mounted Pro Til3 – did get working a number of valuable benefits were quickly apparent: “We halved the time taken to establish crops, and halved the volume of diesel used. When we were using both conventional and non-inversion tillage we had to hire casual labour to start cultivating as we were still busy with harvest; last year we didn’t have to do that, which was a major financial saving”.
They have moved to direct drilling in two stages. Their original system was to plough and press, before leaving the land – predominantly relatively easy-working ironstone – to weather and then drilling. Their first non-inversion system typically might take four passes, with one or two passes of discs; then running a Guttler press to finish the seedbed ahead of a combination drill.
Now he uses Mzuri’s Pro-Til 3 mounted drill to establish all crops, and the only pre-drilling decision he has to make is whether to use a straw rake ahead of drilling: “It can be a benefit to spread the trash and stubble about and leave it more even. It is a different mind-set to normal tillage. You have to be able to walk away when everybody else is flying about”.
Last year oilseeds were sown in the last week of August: “They are looking well and – if anything – probably a bit too tall. We sowed at 2kgs/ha and could probably have used a lower seed rate”.
After that they waited until the last week of September to start drilling cereals from which they still finished by the end of the second week in October. “We started with the barley which is grown for seed with a seedrate of 90kg/ha and the crop looks fantastic. I have never drilled anything at quite so low a seed rate”.
They moved on to the wheat and finished with the oats in the second week of October: “We completed drilling on a Sunday which was fortunate, because almost immediately after we finished it started raining and never stopped”.
They drilled a break crop of mustard in late spring and drilled wheat straight through it after spraying it off: “We drilled wheat straight through the mustard which must have been 60cm high. The mustard soaks up the available nitrogen and locks it up so it can be released when the crop breaks down after being sprayed just ahead of planting the crop. As a result the straw does not compete with the crop because it is not breaking down as the wheat crop gets established.
“The drill follows the ground contours very well thanks to the oscillation of the individual seed tines, and the crops look much more even. We drill the headlands last to avoid compaction – as recommended by Mzuri – and the fields are wall to wall crops”.
Even when you have a well-designed non-inversion crop establishment system, moving to direct drilling can achieve significant time and cost savings.
Brothers Philip and Martin Gibbs have 700 acres of arable crops on the 1,300 acres they farm at Upper Bentley Farm, Redditch, Worcestershire, the remainder of the farm being grassland that supports 600 beef cattle and 300 sheep.
They were looking to reduce the amount of labour required to run the farm, and have moved from a non-inversion system that uses four passes to direct drilling with a Mzuri Pro-Til4 trailed drill with a grain-only seed tank (a split grain/fertiliser option is available).
Among the key factors in their choice of drill was the quality of service and support they receive from the company and the pedigree of the designer, says Philip: “We know Martin Lole well, and were confident the drill was going to be designed and built correctly because his engineering skills are brilliant”.
It can either work direct or after a single preparatory pass: “We were trying to change the system to make the farm easier to run”, says Martin.
Their arable system was previously based around primary cultivation with a combined disc/tine cultivator, which was used to restructure the soil before a power harrow finished off the seedbed. After that they drilled and rolled: “We have done away with that system now and all we do is consider whether to do any preparatory work, and then drill and roll”.
After combining they remove all straw for the livestock and then decide what else is needed: “We might FlatLift a third of the acreage every year to ensure we keep the structure healthy and then use a straw rake on the other two thirds to ensure we get a good weed and volunteer chit and get them sprayed off ahead of drilling. Raking costs next to nothing”.
He says soil workability is improving, something assisted by the regular spreading of manure, which they work into the ground with a disc/tined cultivator.
“The soil’s workability is getting better and it feels firmer, so we can get on with the sprayer earlier and it doesn’t have any ruts in it. It feels firmer and drains better because the earthworms are there and we are not disrupting their home or the channels they make vertically through the soil”.
Moving to direct drilling is just another logical step in improving arable farming practice for Philip Woods, who runs some 3,000 acres of arable land from his base at Kensworth, Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
His company – P R Farming – runs their home farm of 600 acres and a further 2,200 acres for a range of customers in the region.
He abandoned ploughing for non-inversion tillage and a cultivator drill around the millennium, which reduced the time and cost taken to establish crops in the autumn.
And now he feels he is moving forward again by switching to ‘strip tilling’ crops, having invested in a Mzuri Pro-Till 4, a British-designed drill that places the seed accurately with no prior cultivation.
He has started by using the drill on his family’s farm with the aim of gaining practical experience of the technique before offering it to customers:
“We had direct drilled some crops with the cultivator drill quite successfully in the right conditions and the right season, but we still have some heavier bits of land that need restructuring, so we still did some preparatory work ahead of it.
“Last autumn we strip-tilled our oilseed rape and it looks excellent. One noticeable difference is that we have an even crop right up to the field edge; there is no headland because we are not turning on it with heavy cultivators all the time”.
The Mzuri has also sown both winter and spring beans: “We drilled winter beans on land which we had loosened because we knew it had a plough pan, and then went straight in onto undisturbed land this spring.
“The drill easily penetrated to the depth we needed and the crop germinated within 48 hours. There is now a mass of root structure where the soil has been moved. We have fitted the new design of harrow which seemed to help”.
He has started using later drilling dates to help control Black-grass, and moving to a strip-till system should help that as it eliminates the preceding passes: “With our former drill we started drilling in early September, which seemed to suit the Black-grass.
“Last autumn on our own farm we drilled wheat into rape stubble on September 25th, but establishment was a little slow and the slugs got hold of it. Next season we will go for a stale seedbed and drill slightly earlier – it is a learning curve and we need to be sure we know the system before we roll it out across customers’ land”.
Having a clean stubble from the previous crop, and not bringing up buried weed seeds, should help, he feels. “We did 110 acres of wheat direct into oilseed rape stubble and it is a handsome looking crop”.
One important benefit of using a one-pass system is that it eliminates the danger of being disrupted if the weather turns wet mid-season: “The crop is either drilled or it is not and if it isn’t then we can look at spring drilling. We cannot get caught out half way through the system”.
They do cultivate where needed: “We drilled 50 acres of second wheat into ground where we had used a sub-soiler to cure a compaction problem. The Mzuri worked straight into the stale seedbed. It actually looks better than some of the first wheats grown after oilseeds. It is clean as a whistle with not a bit of Black-grass to be seen.
“With the Mzuri it is one man, one tractor and one pass; you are not reliant on somebody else doing their job first”.
The Mzuri faced its hardest test on a new block of ground: “We only took control of it on April 1st and it is difficult land, but we direct drilled spring barley into it and it is up and away, so that is another option when we’re considering how to counteract Black-grass.
He says the drill does require significant power for a 4m model – but if you are only doing a single pass you are saving all the power from other operations.
The difficulty of creating quality seedbeds from the heavy Vale of York clay soils persuaded David Blacker that a move to strip tillage and different rotations might help performance and make the contracting side of the business easier to run.
Church Farm, Shipton-by-Beningborough, near York, is an HGCA monitor farm, and David works with a group of like-minded professional farmers to set performance benchmarks and discuss important issues like soil structure, machinery requirements and the like.
At the moment ways of meeting the new ‘three-crop rule’ is a hot topic, with David’s answer being to add spring beans to the wheat and oilseeds already in his rotation.
He farms 500 acres at Church Farm and does another 1,000 acres of contracting, with crop establishment being split evenly between conventional plough-based cultivations and non-inversion techniques.
But neither system was totally reliable, and working clay-based soils was causing soil compaction that was combining with inherent poor drainage to reduce yields:
Our system simply didn’t work properly anymore, especially in wet conditions, when getting crops drilled became a nightmare. Working clay soils when they’re wet is never good and we were suffering from gradually falling yields and income.
“We can normally expect to get four tonnes/acres yields, but in wet seasons we were struggling to maintain three tonnes/acre. I felt I needed to do something different and decided that avoiding working the soil repeatedly was the right idea.
He chose his 4m Mzuri Pro Til drill because he felt it was the best machine for the job:
It probably goes against many people’s thinking on direct drilling, because it moves quite a bit of soil. But the front leg does an excellent restructuring operation which benefits the crop.
It also enables us to place fertiliser below the seedbed – we have been using DAP (di-ammonium phosphate) to provide some early nutrition for the growing crop and to replenish the soil’s reserves for the future.
We used it for the first time in autumn 2013 and we went straight from plough-based cultivations to direct drilling with no cut in yield, but with a huge savings in the time, complication and cost of crop establishment.
Removing the number of passes in the system is already having benefits to the soil:
Where we ploughed we might do as many as four operations ahead of the cultivator drill; where we were using non-inversion tillage we might still do three preparatory passes
Farming land that is mainly heavy clay-based soils but includes patches of other types running right through to sand, Cade Contracting needs to use a flexible drill if it is only going to run one.
The company – based at Paddock Farm, Buckden, Cambridgeshire – works 400 acres near Huntingdon, and completes a variety of contracting work across the region, including a 250 acre block at Worthing, Norfolk.
It switched to direct drilling and strip-tillage for establishing crops some years ago, but felt that its initial choice of drill was not performing as well as required. It now runs a 3m Mzuri Pro-Til which is owned by one of their clients. This drill has solved the problems, says Paul Cade:
Our first ‘direct drill’ struggled on the heavier soils in Cambridgeshire. We have some really heavy clays and when conditions turned damp it would open up a nice seed slot, place the seed, but struggle to close it properly
We were particularly disappointed in one crop of wheat sown after we had burned out a grass ley. There were as many misses as hits. We looked at several leading competitors; one of them – advertised as a direct drill – produced a bow wave of soil which it carried up the field.
One of our clients isn’t afraid to try new ideas and suggested we had a look at the Mzuri. We agreed with him because it is simple and effective. The legs till a nursery bed for the seed, but cause very little soil disturbance. The areas between the seed rows is completely undisturbed, which is important on our heavy soils.
We now use a 3m Pro-Til and it has covered a couple of thousand acres in the two seasons we have had it and has performed well with all crops
They generally leave drilling winter crops until October to enable them to get a good weed and volunteer chit as possible, and then drill as quickly as possible:
With the Mzuri we are confident we can work in any conditions. This spring we were able to drill some beans in conditions when we could barely walk on the field.
The crops we drilled last autumn all look very well – that’s the customer’s opinion, not just ours! We drilled some winter beans for one client in November. The drill came home absolutely smothered in mud but the beans came through beautifully and he is very happy with his crop.
The drill can tend to leave the seed-bed slightly ridged after it has drilled, and we occasionally run a Carrier over it to level off the surface if we feel that will help pre-em treatments be totally effective
Mzuri confirmed attendance at Tillage-Live event taking place on 14th September at Monks Kirby, Warwickshire, where the manufacturer will be presenting their low disturbance tillage equipment. Specifically, visitors to the Mzuri’s demonstration plot will be able to see Mzuri’s new Pro-Til ‘direct till drill’ concept and the Rezult straw rake. The company’s technical staff will also be at hand on James Green Farm Machinery’s stand to advise farmers on best strip-till practice techniques.
New to Tillage-Live show, Mzuri will use its working plot to showcase its innovative ‘direct till drill’ concept – a unique 3-in-1 drill which allows users to carry out strip tilling, direct drilling and precision seeding with just one piece of equipment. The one pass drill offers the ultimate flexibility which is awarded by its wide choice of seeding coulters, some of which will be fitted onto the Pro-Til 3T Select – Mzuri’s trailed three metre model – on demonstration. Designed to create minimum soil disturbance, the Pro-Til Select produces a narrow tilled band to ensure quick and even seed germination whist leaving the rest of the ground intact to aid soil structure. Capable of drilling most combinable crops, the direct till drill will feature pivoting leading discs, auto-reset breaker legs complete with wing and fertiliser placement option and staggered reconsolidating wheels, to ensure the perfect seeding environment. The patented seeding legs on the machine have a 900mm clearance for maximum trash flow and pivot side to side to ensure the seed is always placed centrally to the seeding zone. The legs will feature a ground-following wheel which delivers exceptional seeding depth accuracy, with a pressure ram for optimum soil reconsolidation. A combination of these unique features significantly reduces the risks typically associated with crop establishment, which include hair pinning or uneven germination.
Seed delivery is from a dual 3400 litre hopper (60:40 seed:fertiliser ratio) with variable seed metering unit and seed flow monitors also fitted as standard. The Select model is capable of placing seed in 33.3cm or 66.6cm row spacings and in single or dual bands, depending on coulter configuration, to best suit the crop. The Pro-Til direct till drill can go directly into straw stubble and previous crop residue, as well as into ploughed seedbed. The Pro-Til 3T Select model retails from £63,840.00.
Mzuri will also be demonstrating the Rezult – the 7.5m low disturbance tilth generator. Fitted with 24 front cutting discs and 5 rows of extra-long 28” tines, the Rezult marks a major advance in the preparation of stale seedbeds and straw management. The light tilth produced by the machine is ideal for stimulating weed germination and has proven to be highly effective in controlling black-grass, as well as disturbing slug habitats. Followed by a blanket application of non-selective herbicide, this creates the perfect environment for drilling. The Rezult can also be fitted with a Stocks seeder which makes for a cheap, yet highly effective method of establishing cover crops. Retail prices start at £13,990.00.