It had to happen, our first big frost for the year. Ah yes, you get up on Sunday morning, turn on the Radio and hear the local weather “it is currently -2.5 C and feels like -3.5 C”. Its at this point that you then ask yourself questions like ‘Why didn’t I stay in bed?’ or ‘Why do I store wood for the fire outside?’ or, even better, ‘Why don’t we live in Queensland on the coast?’. Hmmm.
Anyway, such is life. Back to topic, whats happening in July on the Farm? Well July Farming is really brought to you by the letter ‘S’. ‘S’ is for Spraying and ‘S’ is also for Spreading. ‘S’ isn’t for Getting bogged or making massive tractor track marks in your wet paddocks – although I’m fairly sure that when I hit one of those trenches at harvest time around midnight driving the header, other words starting with ‘S’ may well come into play.
Yes the crops are up and going, so we need to provide them with extra fertiliser to encourage their growth potential. The fertiliser we mainly use is called Urea which is nitrogen based. Basically chocolate desert or candy for plants. They love it. We apply it by broadcasting or spreading it evenly over each paddock. Due to the nature of urea, which wants to break down into into a form for the the plants to use, we want some rain to wash it into the soil profile before the breakdown occurs. Urea reacts with water initially to form ‘urease’ which in turn breaks down into Ammonia (NH3) which is a gas. If further moisture is present it then reacts further to form the Ammonium (NH4) version which the plants roots take up. So we want this reaction to occur in the soil so that the Ammonia gas doesn’t simply blow away into the air. If left on top of the soil with a bit of moisture and strong warm winds, the loss of Ammonia through volatilisation can be large. Then, all that money you spent on the fertiliser is simply ‘Gone with the Wind…’
So the timing of fertiliser applications with potential rain fronts is always in our minds.
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Here are a few pictures of the tractor with a linkage spreader (carried at the rear of the tractor on its 3 point linkage arms). The fertiliser is held in the box attached to the tractor, with two high speed disks below which spreads the fertiliser over the paddock as you drive along. The rate of the fertiliser is controlled by varying the size of the hole at the bottom of the bin which allows the fertiliser to fall through.
I was working in some of our Gilgai ground which is filled with soft muddy soakage areas, making the tractor look a little like a swamp monster. Yes, a high pressure clean is definite in this tractor’s future. We bring the fertiliser by truck from Newcastle, then keep it at the farm for the right time. From here it gets loaded onto our old farm truck and transported to the paddock. Linkage spreaders, don’t hold a lot of fertiliser (about 2 tonne at a time), so putting out large amounts of urea can take quite a few trips. |
Then comes spraying. Here we have to look for favourable winds and lack of frosts. Wind and humidity is important at this time of year as we need to be very careful of any potential drift to susceptible crops. For example, volunteer Canola or wild turnip in a wheat paddock are weeds to be killed, but the next paddock may have an actual canola crop in it – separated by only a wire fence. So we need to ensure that we don’t kill it by wind drift. Frost affects the metabolism of plants, often making chemicals less effective than they should be. So we try and be aware of frost events and work around them as well.
In other words, at this time of year, weather forecasting sites get more hits by farmers than at any other. We look for rain events, minimum temperature forecasts, humidity levels and wind speed/direction. And we are often disappointed by their accuracy. Very short term forecasts have improved, but anything over a day or two looses accuracy quickly. When you are trying to plan a camping weekend for the family, an inaccurate weather forecast may be disappointing, but for farmers – it can cost us a lot of money. And every farmer has their own favourite ‘reliable’ weather forecaster or site.
And when we get together at an event, just ask the question like ‘Which weather site do you use?’ and prepare for a long conversation. 😉
So there you go. All in all, our crops look like they have a lot of potential at the moment. So we continue to tend them in the hope of a good harvest.
Cheers
NeilK