Ten years ago in WA we made a big song and dance about burning narrow windrows to destroy weed seeds and many grain growers jumped on board for the first time. You’ll never guess what happened! Summer rain, and plenty of it. When we came out of hiding (expecting to be lynched by farmers with burning torches) we were pleasantly surprised to find that the windrows actually burnt really well after they were given a couple of weeks to dry out. Another up-side was it was easy to keep the fire in the windrow. In 2011 when AHRI ran workshops…

Australian golfer Adam Scott keeps his eye on the ball. His ability to concentrate and focus amongst the chaos of a major golf tournament is outstanding. We would all love to focus on one task and do it well, but the reality of life is that we are rarely afforded this luxury. For grain growers, managing resistant weeds is just another thing to fit into the complexity that is farming. Growers that afford themselves the time and motivation to focus on managing resistant weeds are having a win. They declare war on the weed seed bank and have a ‘take…

The best option to maximise the weed seed bank is to harvest high and spread all of the weed seeds evenly over the paddock. This will give you something to spray next year. If you, like most others, feel that this is a bad idea, it may be time to start narrow windrow burning. Narrow windrow burning is a good place to start to see if this harvest weed seed control caper is all it is cracked up to be. The first step is to spend some time familiarising yourself with a beer can. The internationally accepted harvest height when…