Listen time: 46.24 minutes

S06E02 Upwards of 90% weed seed burial with some soil amelioration approaches

Welcome back to the WeedSmart Podcast for 2021! Your hosts, Jessica Strauss and Peter Newman will join you again in 2021 each fortnight to look at a timely topic related to weed control.

 

In this episode, we’re focusing on soil amelioration.

Western Australian Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development Research Scientist, Dr Stephen Davies joins us to explain what’s involved with soil amelioration and the benefits of this approach.

Dr Stephen Davies conducting soil sampling in Mingenew.

We also hear from Daridyn Haywards from Lameroo in the South Australian Mallee.

He was involved in a project called: “Spading header rows for grassy weed control, improved crop yields and better soil protection”, led by Chris Donohue and has been continuing to adopt the practice of using soil amelioration for both soil improvement and weed control benefits.

Three years after Daridyn’s first treatment of header spading.

Daridyn’s initial main focus was to build up the organic carbon levels in the soil for improved soil health, water holding capacity & hopefully overcoming the Rhizoctonia issue he faced. The weed seed burial was part of that process as we’ll hear.

SA Mallee farmer, Daridyn Haywards in a spaded row of hay crop.

Peter Newman has been an advocate for soil amelioration for a number of years and has contributed to this article on the subject. We also have a great case study on Andrew Kenny who uses this approach too.

New content

Over the Christmas period, our content producer Cindy Benjamin was very busy. There’s a range of new articles and videos available to check out.

You can learn all about how to weaponise sorghum crops to take out Feather Top Rhodes and Awnless Barnyard Grass.

And we’ve also got a new article on running down the summer grass seedbank in mungbeans.

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