AS A one-man show managing a continuous cropping program, Tintinara grower James Jeschke has to keep on top of strategies to prevent weed control concerns.
Mr Jeschke crops wheat, barley, canola, beans and clover hay at his 710-hectare Lone Pine property, which comprises mainly loamy soils.
While there is no set crop rotation, he says wheat tends to average every third year in the rotation and he has started to grow wheat-on-wheat paddocks, which may reduce herbicide efficacy.
"I have a couple of paddocks where ryegrass has been a problem (resistant to triazine herbicides),'' Mr Jeschke said.
"Having hay in the rotation has certainly helped.
"By cutting the ryegrass before seedset, it's allowed big headway with grass control.''
He previously applied trifluralin and Avadex Xtra when sowing wheat, but it was putting a lot of pressure on follow-up grass control in legume crops, including the use of Select herbicide in beans.
"I think the crop yields were coming back more with this previous situation," he said.
For the first time last season, Mr Jeschke applied the Group K pre-emergent herbicide Sakura 850 WG across all his wheat and the paddocks were "very clean''.
"It slowed the populations down and we saw clean paddocks,'' he said.
Containing the active ingredient pyroxasulfone, Sakura is a highly concentrated granule and has a low use rate of 118 grams a hectare.
It controls annual ryegrass, barley grass, silver grass, annual phalaris and toad rush and provides suppression of wild oats and great brome in wheat (not durum wheat) and triticale crops.
"After two earlier knocks, Sakura was applied with paraquat and diquat at seeding,'' Mr Jeschke said.
"With Sakura you also have the comfort of a couple of days before incorporation, which is different to using trifluralin. Being a one-man-show, this is very good. You can put it out and have a few days up your sleeve.''
He said there were also no crop issues from using Sakura, whereas with Boxer Gold, which was applied with barley, he had noticed some problems in some previous crops.
Other strategies were also employed to help contain grasses.
"I'm a firm believer in sowing wheat and barley at a heavier rate so it gives better crop competition,'' Mr Jeschke said.
"I'm trying to cut crops shorter as well and I've started burning header rows, so there is good soil contact with pre-emergent herbicides.''
Mr Jeschke said wild oats were another problem he was looking to control in bean crops.
If canola was harvested early, he would apply Gramoxone.
"You have got to keep mixing all these things up - mixing crops and chemicals,'' he said.
"Potentially, I'm now applying each product to a given area only once every five years, whereas previously I was applying Treflan and Group A herbicides over everything each year.''
