Glenlea Partners, Lucindale SA

Peter and Alison Williams and children Tim & Mary, farm 1790 hectares at Lucindale in the high rainfall zone of the South East of South Australia.  Their cropping program is 1135 hectares of wheat, barley & beans on a continual rotation. They've been minimal till, full stubble retention for over 20 years.

What prompted you to invest in a Seed Terminator?

Due to our heavy stubble loads and long season rainfall, weeds, especially rye grass, has always been problematic and after having two very wet winters which made controlling weeds even more difficult, it became obvious that we had to do something other than rely solely on chemicals.  Not being able to windrow burn and preferring not to go down the chaff cart path because of the heavy stubble loads, mechanical weed seed control seemed a good choice.

How has your s670 coped with the Seed Terminator?

We fitted a Seed Terminator to our John Deere S670 last harvest and had a trouble free run, although horsepower was lacking due to the cool period during our early harvest and also quite bad frosting in some of our wheat.  Hearing the new design for this year will require less power is going to be beneficial.

You sent some pictures of 'Proof in the Paddock' back in April, have you had much germination since?

It’s only early days in this process but we are quite happy with the results so far especially not having the volunteer cereals come up that came out the back of the header because of the frosting that occurred.  The challenge will be to get as many weed seeds into the header as possible because the terminator controls them from there.  Where we windrowed barley as early as we could, the results have been extremely good.

What about the future?

So far the experience has been positive and we’re looking forward to seeing the results after the second year especially if the horsepower required is less.

Our barley paddock that was windrowed before harvest after 25mls of rain in April 2018

Neighboring paddock after being speed tilled in February after 25mls of rain in April 2018