TAMMIN farmer Brad Jones has been stirring up the dust at the start of seeding, but with moisture in the lower profile of the subsoil, he is confident the oats and Roundup Ready canola going in won’t germinate yet.
“Its only April, so it’s not like its crazy,” Mr Jones said.
“It’s just that edge when you just want to go and we should really all just go away and wait.”
Mr Jones has five full-time workers who become all hands-on deck at seeding time.
With spraying, rock picking, fixing machines and three bars going, the whole team is needed.
“I have a couple of businesses that sit on the side, but when we are busy here everyone comes back on the farm,” he said.
He also owns a business that has two airplanes spraying cotton in New South Wales at the moment but they will be making their way to WA soon.
This year Mr Jones is trialling a technology change comparing a Monosem system to conventional precision planting.
“It’s all about seed singulation,” he said.
“In the past we have got our canola seeding rates down to 600 grams.”
This year they are cropping about 11,500 hectares, with the farm being just over 13,000ha.
“We have a lot of bush and a lot of stuff down in the salt country which has been retired and revegetated,” he said.
Mr Jones has switched his TT canola for barley this year due to concerns that by the time it comes out of the ground it might struggle.
“It’s just our TT hybrid, we will continue with our Roundup Ready canola, then we will go onto 1700ha of barley, then we have wheat and field peas,” he said.
Mr Jones said they had been growing field peas for 11 years as it was a good break crop.
Canola follows the field peas.
“If we don’t grow the canola on the back of the field peas and opt for a wheat or barley it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“We just like that double knock for disease and weeds.”
Close to 50 per cent of Mr Jones’ program is seeded to wheat, with a mixture of half noodle wheats and half APW varieties.
They are seeding oats with an old Forward bar, on 19 centimetre (7.5 inch) spacings, for hay.
Two DBS bars on 30cm (12in) spacings will be used when seeding gets into full swing.
