(Editor’s note: This article is being shared via Direct Driller, a conservation tillage magazine based in the United Kingdom.)

By Neil White, Greenknowe, Scotland 

2021 has seen me — after 5 years of direct drilling — drill malting spring barley into oats for the first time. I had a big volunteer oat crop due to cutting wet oats at harvest, which I left into winter. 

Every cloud has a silver lining, though, as the oats provided some winter grazing for a neighbor’s sheep. The field was then limed, snowboarded on (behind a speeding pick-up), sprayed off and finally in March, we sowed Diablo spring barley. 

I must admit the winter’s heavy rain, combined with the grazing, did result in some crusting prior to sowing. Combined with the subsequent dry weather after sowing, that played a part in slower crop emergence. So I wonder if leaving the oats and grazing them was a good choice. 

I’ve also sown spring rape into a cover crop for a neighbor. While the cover was not that thick, the root system in the top layer did cause some open slots and a folding — when the shallow roots bind the soil and cause it to lift in a block rather than break up — under the turf from the cover crop roots. My neighbor and I are a bit worried as the slug and beetle activity looks to have already decimated the crop.