More soil water for Waters

CALINGIRI farmer Steve Waters has proven that by making minor low-cost adjustments to his seeding techniques, he can improve water penetration in non-wetting soils, leading to better crop germination and prevention of rye grass spreading.

Between 2-20 per cent of some paddocks on Mr Waters farm are impacted by non- wetting soil, which in previous years influenced the spread of rye grass and impacted on his crop yields.

On our gravelly non-wetting hills, if you sow in the inter-row the crop takes a long time to germinate, but using the 2cm GPS, we can sow on the row and it seems to germinate straight away with the rest of the crop, he said.

Weve found if you sow in between the rows, you dont have much crop competition with the rye grass; the rye grass seems to germinate on the last years row.

We already had RTK GPS technology in the tractor, so this is a very low cost approach for us. And were seeing a 100 per cent improvement in the bad patches of non-wetting soils.

The Real Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS system used by Mr Waters, delivers equipment auto guidance accuracy to two-cm.

Mr Waters farms 1100 hectares, about 150km north-east of Perth with his partner Jamie King. He follows a seven-year rotation growing wheat, canola and barley, as well as pastures for sheep feed sown into the barley stubble.

The soil types on Mr Waters property range from sandy gravel hills (non-wetting) as well as loamy red and grey clay country.

He believes the incorporation of a knife-point seeding system might be the reasoning behind better water penetration in non-wetting soils.

Ive got a theory that it might be the knife point on the cultivator busting up a bit of clay from underneath, from the year before, and the water is following that clay band down, he said.

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More soil water for Waters