TC. I tried to find the 2013 farm thread. It doesn't appear to be here. Perhaps time for some updating?
Here's a brief summery then.
Had a cracker of a sorghum crop last season. Hot dry start, then rain on Christmas day, then a wet January and February with almost half a years rainfall over those two months had one of the biggest crops we've grown. We averaged 8.5 tonnes to the hectare. Add to that the totally unexpected situation of China buying half a million tonnes of Australian sorghum for the first ever time to turn into alcohol, and it was a great period on the farm. Prices and yield were great.
Since then though, it's been tougher. Planted wheat into the harvested sorghum stubble. It's had just 80 mills since and will be a poor crop. Might go 2 tonnes per hectare. Oh well! can't win em all?
The wheat is now filling, and will be ready for harvest in a month. It will be the worst wheat crop we've grown for years. But prices should be OK, as not much wheat in northern NSW and QLD due to the dry.
One new thing going on with me is that I've planted cotton for the very first time.
Just 20 hectares to see how it goes. This crop would almost definitely be the most easterly crop in NSW and may also be the most easterly cotton crop ever planted in NSW. Although there would be more easterly crops in QLD on the Darling Downs.
It was planted 3 weeks ago, dryland, into some nice soil moisture, Came up OK, and It will be interesting to see how it goes. The little plants have been above ground for 10 days and are about 2 cm across. The cotton is genetically modified, so it can be sprayed with roundup for weed control and is heliothus and bug resistant, so shouldn't need spraying with pesticide.
Genetically modified cotton has been a game changer for the whole industry. Non GM cotton needed to be sprayed with pesticide weekly, and weeds were a nightmare with chippers needed to manually chip out the tough weeds. These days it's pretty easy to grow and there's no way I'd have ever planted cotton if it wasn't GM.
Just waiting now for some rain to plant our sorghum crop. There was 14 mills yesterday but that won't be enough. Will be putting in about 750 hectares. Hoping China turns up again and they are a bit thirsty!
See ya's.
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