Barley after. peas —in same season

Press, 16 August 1985, Page 19

Barley after. peas —in same season

Lincoln cropping farmer John Morrish has grown barley in paddocks fresh out of vining peas for the last two seasons. With one success and one failure behind him, he is still not prepared to confidently recommend the idea — but he is going to try it again this year.

“It was a dead loss the first year because I wasn’t keeping a close enough eye on it and the rust got into it. We got 18 tonnes of rubbish off 17 acres, but it was a beautiful crop to start off with,” says John. The way the crop established encouraged him to try again this last season — and to keep en eye on rust. He met with success. The result was 35 tonnes off 19 acres — nice plump barley described as the best quality crop grown in the district last season. The secret? “I don’t know if there is one.”

Certainly, the crop has to go in before Christmas. John has managed that without too many problems in both seasons as the viners are out of the peas by midDecember. It’s an ideal situation for direct drilling, but John was

and is not prepared to invest capital in a direct drill — which he doesn’t have — for a crop which he still considers a gamble. “If you get a lot of rain in April, you could lose it.” He believes that in a normal year, two or three grubbings should be sufficient, but last year rain put paid- to the plan of getting the straw off the paddock in bales, so it had to be rotaryhoed in. He would normally prefer not to use a rotary hoe.

John Morrish is mindful of the gamble, too, when planning fertiliser. “I wasn’t keen to spend too much money in case it didn’t work, so I just put straight super on at 250 kg/ ha.”

The day after sowing, wind allowing, John takes advantage of the “thin” nature of this late crop to sow white clover into it; the clover establishes well, he says.

From John’s point of view, the strategy makes sense for a number of reasons.

The typical alternative is

turnips and grass, “... and there’s a lot more money in barley than sheep.” The crop grows well — it doesn’t tiller the same and doesn’t grow as tall, but there was no questioning the plumpness of what was there last season.

John and his brother have shares in a drier, so that investment can be capitalised on as well. Furthermore, John Morrish looks around him and sees intensive horticultural crops going in and knows that the pressure is also on him to intensify.

John farms lOOha of Templeton silt loam, leasing and share-farming another 36ha. He grows a rotation of wheat, peas, barley, clover, wheat, as well as a paddock of ryegrass each year. He also lambs 1100 ewes. Approximately 800 are oneyear ewes which are bought in late summer and either sold all counted or the lambs go into the beta grade. He maintains a mob of about 300 two tooths which are carried through the summer on the property.

John Morrish is a keen user of Glean herbicide in barley — although not in the late crop, because of the undersown clover.

He was particularly impressed by the way it cleaned up an infestation of dandelion in a paddock of winter barley which was direct drilled (by contractor) into a stand of run-out lucerne.

“It did an excellent job in the dandelion. I was very impressed.”

Dandelion is not a weed for which Glean is registered.

Glean is convenient to use and relatively inexpensive, he says, and it offers the added advantage that because it is applied early it doesn’t leave wheel marks in the crop. He won’t use it in wheat, though, because he had a suppression problem with it two years ago when conditions were very wet. He prefers to go into wheat later on with something to kill Californian thistles which are not smothered by wheat as they are by barley.