LUXIMO® ON FARM: David Hurn
About David
David is a third-generation farmer. He went to Eastern Agricultural College to study agriculture for four years, including a gap year which he spent in the United States. On finishing college, David spent another year overseas, harvesting green beans up and down the eastern seaboard, from Florida to New York state. He returned to the UK to work on the 150ha family farm in Norfolk.
Fast forward to now, and David has adopted min-till, the use of cover crops and a robust approach to black-grass management. While there’s a reduced tillage system in place, David uses the plough rotationally, or after sugar beet if the season has been wet.
With recent high input costs and lower prices, margins have been the core focus in the last few years. However, with costs coming down, David’s attention is back on yields, whilst maintaining an eye on margins
The varieties David grows are changing. This year the main wheat crop was Bairstow. He also grew smaller acreages of Skyscraper and Typhoon. Bairstow will continue to be the main variety in 2024/25 as he likes its similarities to Skyscraper and has the added benefit of being cleaner. With its short, stiff straw Zealum is likely to follow the vining peas and, depending on price, David may also try some Bamford to grow on and multiply for the following year.
Black-grass
Black-grass hasn’t been a huge problem but it is ‘a problem’ on the farm. “We used to grow potatoes which meant the rotation was wider and, with few effective chemical options, black-grass has become an increasing issue,” explains David.
“We’re using a wide range of cultural tools in combination with chemical options to a keep a lid on the issue as best we can. It’s a continuing war of attrition.”
David is using stale seedbeds and delayed drilling, aiming to get, and spray-off, two flushes before drilling autumn crops. Hand-rogueing tidies up any surviving black-grass in early summer.
Mowing a meter along the outside edge of fields twice each summer removes any other seeding grassweeds, preventing them from getting into the crop.
“I don’t have resistant rye grass in our fields yet and I don’t want any!” he says.
Rotation
Sitting on the heavy silts of the Wash, the farm’s rotation has changed in recent years. Today, it revolves around vining peas which are grown one year in seven. The other crops - winter wheat, sugar beet and spring barley - fit around the peas.
Ahead of the spring crops, David has started sowing cover crops: “We’ve a four species in the mix – clover, phacelia, buckwheat and linseed. There’s a fine balance to be achieved. We want the cover crop to be competitive against the black-grass but not so much that it prevents germination. Otherwise, when we desiccate the cover crop, we’ll find a big flush of black-grass just before or after drilling the cash crop.”
Longer term, David is hoping the cover crops will improve organic matter and soil structure, meaning land drains better and is less ‘habitable’ for the black-grass.
2023/2024 Season
Unlike autumn 2022 which was “almost textbook” according to David, autumn 2023 was very challenging.
While he did get drilled up before storm Babet arrived in October 2023, a small acreage had to be redrilled.
“Our pre-emergence programme of Luximo + Stomp Aqua + Avadex Factor + diflufenican, has done a very good job. But where we couldn’t get back on with a pre-em, there’s plenty of black-grass,” he notes.
Looking ahead
“The fields that are reasonably clean are due to go into spring cropping anyway, but the smaller areas of re-drilling that now are harbouring black-grass, will be put into spring cropping too. We’ve already taken the decision to spray off the worst weed patches,” explains David.
“I’ll be looking to use Luximo + Stomp again, and where there’s higher pressure, I will also consider Avadex + diflufenican.”
