Soil & Farm Systems
Benefits of EM mapping and soil testing
Achieving balanced crop nutrition depends on understanding the crop's nutritional requirements and knowing the most effective time, form and method of applying additional nutrients if required.
Getting the most out of nitrogen and irrigation in a tight year
Your nitrogen topdressing requirement should be determined by how much water you have available to finish off your crop, current soil moisture status and likely returns.
Growing wheat straight after rice
Growing reliable, high yielding wheat crops immediately after rice is a great opportunity to improve the productivity of rice farming systems in southern NSW. This factsheet includes; the important Dos and Dont's, surface drainage, soil type, rice stubble handling, wheat sowing time, wheat sowing rate, fertiliser and top-dressing, variety selection and soil acidity.
Rice stubble management
It is important to capitalise on the valuable resources in rice stubble, including soil moisture, nutrients in the rice stubble and the rice stubble organic matter content. This article includes some simple strategies to leverage last seasons rice stubble.
Determining nitrogen top-dressing requirements for wheat
Calculating how much urea is required to be top dressed onto winter cereals is a matter of determining how much the crop will require, how much is currently available and then how much is required to make up the difference. This step-by-step guide walks you through the process with recommendations.
Barley seed rate and irrigation frequency
One of the more difficult decisions growers have to make each spring is to decide where to use their irrigation water to get the best returns. This resource provides some guidance to support decision making.
Setting the benchmark - Rice growers maximising yields and returns, and making the most of water
Rice is a valuable component of irrigation farm businesses and crop rotations for many irrigators in the Murray and Murrumbidgee valleys. From a business perspective, maximising returns per megalitre, per hectare and per dollar spent is essential for the long-term growth of a farm business.
Soil Health Guide
The guide provides information to help identify possible soil health issues using nine simple visual tests conducted in the paddock. The tests are cheap and easy, and can be undertaken using home-made equipment such as wire quadrants.
Switching from rice to row crops using beds in bays
In southern New South Wales, there has been considerable interest in bankless channel layouts for irrigation, i.e. a eld of stepped bays with water being supplied to the eld by a bankless channel at the head of each bay. Conversion to this new layout has been driven by the ease of water management and labour savings, particularly compared with traditional siphon layouts for row cropping.
Managing and retaining large irrigation stubbles
Better soil moisture retention and better soil health as a result of stubble retention are worth the effort to overcome barriers to adoption. This article outlines approaches and considerations.
Permanent beds on rice farms
Permanent lateral beds in bays potentially offer several advantages over cropping on flat layouts. The research reported here is part of a large project involving field experiments in varying irrigation systems in Australia and north west India, computer modelling of crop growth and development, and economic analysis of different cropping systems.
Evaluating your surface irrigation system
These materials are part of the WaterWise on the Farm education program Introduction to Irrigation Management and outline surface irrigation, farm supply, the irrigated field, surface drainage and reuse systems.