THERE is a bigger focus on pastures this year for Varley farmers Anna-Lisa and Craig Newman.
Pictured with three-year-old daughter Edith, the couple started their seeding program on February 28 with 2000 hectares of serradella, bisurella and some bladder clover pastures, which is complementing both their 9000 head Merino flock and 5500 hectare cropping program.
“It makes good sense as it is providing sheep feed and organic nitrogen as well as improving soil fertility,” Craig said.
“A lot has changed in pasture technology so now we can start seeding it in February before the main seeding program – that is a huge advantage and if you’re putting a bit of phosphorus with it so when it does rain you know you’ve got a flush.”
The couple started the rest of its seeding program on April 10, although like most areas across the Wheatbelt, the rainfall they have received has been patchy and extremely variable.
“The way the rain has been has been similar to the way frost has happened where we got 3 millimetres here while a farm 30 kilometres away got 120mm in the same event,” Anna-Lisa said.
“The farm here has had 25mm in April and May, whereas normally it would have had 61mm, so it has had 40 per cent of the average rainfall and our other farm further west has had 20pc below average.
“Luckily the farm east has had 100pc average rainfall so it is looking really good and the canola looks beautiful.
“We reckon about 10-20pc of the program still needs rain to germinate it but the rest has come up from 4-5mm events.”
While Anna-Lisa said “it was still early days” in making the decision to pull back on crop sprays, they would look to be more targeted in some of their applications.
Staggered germination across the paddock also means that spray application will be pushed back.
“We shouldn’t get as much disease pressure and the nitrogen strategy won’t change as that was done up front but for radish and fungal sprays, we’ll be bit more targeted,” she said.
“We have some foliar trace elements planned but we’re thinking we might just go in with half – everyone will be making those decisions but the commodity prices have started to move which is helpful.”
“It is still early days in making those decisions, we aren’t at that point yet.
“There could still be a rainfall event that could change it.”
