I finished sowing the 2021 winter crop this past weekend just gone. Only had one bin of seed left (about 40kg), which I was deliberately holding onto for several weeks, such that I can see the effect of seeding later in the season. It was sown 27/6 up on the main plateau, in a lantana affected area, alongside an earlier section shown in the photos late in this post.
Growth of the crop (earlier sowings) is varying significantly depending on location. The Eastern area has some of the best growth as seen in the photos below:
Seed sown into drier bare areas has little growth. It’s kinda a self fulfilling cycle going on – the good areas improve themselves, whilst the poorer bare areas struggle to get anything growing thanks to the harsh conditions. Need some way of breaking that to get some good cover on those bare areas, so the dirt isn’t baked hard and dry by the sun so quickly.
It would have been good to have planted some seed earlier than I did. The extra growth before winter would have assisted in having more green leaf over the cold period, meaning more ‘solar panels’ for photosynthesis and increased production of root exudates and biomass (both above and below ground).
Did you know the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has a National Soils Advocate? I’m currently part way through watching a series of presentations by scientists at a federal government sponsored event at the National Press Gallery in Canberra. It is all about Soil Organic Carbon, and quite interesting – they are clearly laying out all the science in relation to SOC (Soil Organic Carbon). Definitely worth watching the presentations if you are at all interested in the topic, whether from a farming perspective, or climate change.
https://vimeo.com/soilsadvocate
Sunday arvo I spent a couple hours on the tractor clearing lantana from the eastern side of the Western Plateau. Below is a short video of the outcome. Recently I’ve also spent a few hours each Saturday arvo clearing lantana the old fashion way – grubbing – with a mattock. Even welded up a custom mattock to assist (widened the blade). Now is not the ideal time to be spraying herbicide, with growth being slow due to the cold weather, and I’m finding that for certain types of areas (where there are small bushes dotted around the place, not in thick grass) the manual grubbing isn’t much slower. I won’t be throwing out the dp600 I have though – certainly much easier to spray areas where it is thick, or the ground is rough/steep, or it is growing in thick grass (which makes the base hard to see/find).
A campfire sunset photo never goes amiss, so here’s Saturday night:
