THE 4110 hectare seeding program at the Ned’s Corner property at Munglinup wrapped up at the end of last week.
The canola and wheat program was a little stop-start as things dried out during seeding time, but small amounts of rain through April and May enabled the planting to be finished in pretty good time.
The season started well on the property run by Kieran and Michelle Barrett.
A total of 190 millimetres in February and 23mm in March put good sub-soil moisture down for an early seeding start.
This year’s program comprised 2080 hectares of canola and 2030ha of wheat.
Michelle said they started seeding canola straight after Easter but pulled up once the canola had finished.
“We normally do have a break between canola and wheat as this helps with timing when it comes to harvest, but things also became a little dry, so we stopped to wait for some rain,” she said.
“We receive 18mm for April and this enabled us to get on and finish the rest of the program.”
A May total of 17mm up to last week has set the crop up nicely and there has been germination, albeit patchy, over different areas of the farm.
“We are hoping for a good drop now to even up the germination and set the crop up,” Michelle said.
Bonito is the main variety of canola used, while Mace and Scepter make up the wheat program.
“We tried Scepter last year and went for a larger scale this year,” Michelle said.
“The local grower group, the South East Premium Wheatgrowers Association, has been running wheat trials on our property for the past five years and Scepter has proven itself as worthwhile for this area in those trials.
“Its yields stood out in the wetter years.”
