Lameroo croppers dig new spader

The Haywards – Wayne and Marilyn with sons Daridyn and Aaron – operate 4000ha Baan View Farms, which includes about 1200ha of minimum-till cropping, such as wheat, barley, lupins, vetch and chickpeas.

And while the family undertake many management tools to improve their soils, such as direct drilling, more recently rhizoctonia has been having the greatest effect on yields.

“We have been direct drill sowing since the 1990s,” Daridyn said. 

“But recently we noticed our soils weren’t performing as well as we would have liked after inputs are applied.

“We also noticed an increase in other issues, such as snails, resistant weeds like ryegrass and compaction – our soils were becoming gutless, opening it up to disease.”

For the past five years, the Haywards had been involved in crop trials with the Lameroo Ag Bureau, which included the use of a spading machine.  

“At roughly $100/ha, it can be expensive at first, but over time, you could see the benefits in improved soils and yields because the machine mixes the organic matter on top back into the soil,” Daridyn said. 

“It can also bring clay to the surface, depending on how deep you dig.”

The soil improvement meant less instances of rhizoctonia, which encouraged the Haywards to buy their own Farmax spader in March.

“We decided we would use the spader on our header rows first to help address erosion, and to improve the quality of the soil deeper with organic matter,” Daridyn said.​

The Haywards have spaded more than 200ha this season, while also contract spading for farmers in the district to show how it can improve the soil profile.

They have sown their spaded lighter ground with lupins, their heavier ground with vetch and a small area to a barley/vetch/oats mix, which was cut for hay. 

While on pig manure spaded areas, barley, oats and wheat have been sown.

“We have had some impressive nodulation so far on the vetch and lupins,” Daridyn said.

“As to crop health, on the sandier ground with the lupins, there’s definitely a visual difference, with less patchy areas, while it’s harder to see in the vetch, but you can still see areas where it has improved dramatically.”

It is hoped sowing the spaded paddocks with vetch and legumes will further improve the soils through nitrogen fixation from the crop.

“We will then sow back the paddock to a cereal,” Daridyn said.

LAMEROO crop trials have shown a dramatic yield improvement on gutless soils from delving, which pulled clay up from deep in the soil profile.

It’s an alternative to clay spreading, which can be expensive if clay has to be freighted in from elsewhere.

The Hayward family built their own delving machine, modifying a Symonds blade plough with a tyne angle of 35 degrees.

“We can pull up clay at about 500 millimetres,” Daridyn Hayward said. “Any deeper and clay spreading is probably more effective.”

Mr Hayward said they generally delved in targeted spots, rather than a blanket approach.

“It’s the same with spading, we will concentrate mostly on spading the header rows,” he said.

“Then the next year, we will spade the adjacent row, so after only a few years, the whole paddock will have been spaded.”

Mr Hayward said there were some detrimental effects of spading, including high lime levels in some clays, while erosion was an issue on some sandy hills.

“But overall, spading is still miles in front of not doing it,” he said.

“The sandy hill erosion reinforces that we can’t afford to just blanket spade paddocks, as some soils can’t handle it.

“The focus is on the header rows and about building deeper soils to access moisture better and to increase organic matter in the soils to get more good bugs in the soil.

“Rhizoctonia loves unhealthy soil environments, so our aim is to turn the most organic matter in, with the least amount of fuel.”

Daridyn said they also hoped spading would help to minimise snail populations.

“We retain most of our stubbles, but sometimes we have to burn for snail management,” he said. 

“Hopefully spading can help overcome that by spading the snails back into the soil.”​