Mike Jones runs four farms across West Cheshire alongside a contracting business.
The farms have a variety of soil types from sand to heavy clay and have been minimum tillage operated systems for over 20 years.
In the rotation, Mike has winter wheat, winter barley, winter oilseed rape (OSR), maize and grass. However, more recently they have been doing a lot more beef cattle so starting to grow more barley and maize than wheat for feed.
The farm is unique as it has its own water mill, so Mike is able to stone grind his own farm-grown flour for cafés and bakery's. The majority of wheat is therefore grown for milling purposes. Common varieties in the rotation include skyfall and RGT illustrious.
With this system, Mike is able to supply lots of local businesses such as delis and hotels, cutting out the middle man out.
In this blog, we hear about Mike's grassweed challenges and how he's looking forward to being a part of the Isoflex® active Grower Group.
What is your biggest grassweed problem?
I've had an issue in the past with blackgrass as we haven't ploughed the field enough. But, since ploughing and putting a spring crop back into it, blackgrass hasn't been too much of an issue.
Ryegrass is my main weed problem currently on-farm in most of the rotation, which we’re seeing as a bigger issue wider than just our farms in the industry.
What is your standard programme for controlling ryegrass?
To control ryegrass, we currently whole crop the field and direct drill which helps reduce the pressure of ryegrass.
In our maize fields, we use a maize herbicide which seems to help. However, we’ve had the maize field recently tested and it seems to be resistant, so our options are currently limited.
I've been keen to find a solution to tackle ryegrass in my cereal crops so have been involved with FMC herbicide trials for a number of years.
Mike will be trialling FMC's new Isoflex® active herbicide and is looking forward to seeing the results and how they can work with it on-farm.