New product on seed pays off for salty country on Eyre Peninsula

Keenan Bury, Warramboo, in the MaxSil trial which has germinated a wheat crop after treatment. Picture supplied

A problem saline area has been able to germinate a wheat crop, thanks to an on-farm trial.

Warramboo mixed farmer Keenan Bury applied new silicon-based fertiliser MaxSil to a 10-hectare plot in a paddock of Vixen.

This paddock had previously been used for pastures, with one section a particular problem area, due to being low-lying.

"We get a water run off in that area and I've only just picked up that farm so after years of soaks, the soaks get worse and the area just gets saltier and saltier," he said.

"Every year I like to do a couple of trials or try something new to see if it works and, after I saw a photo of MaxSil, I decided to give it a go as it was an area I wanted to work on this year.

"It's a bit of a problem area and the longer it stays a problem area, the worse it'll get and they sort of have a timer on those types of problems that they can get too far down the track where you will never bring them back.

"I thought now would be a good time to focus on those areas and see if I could resurrect it or stop that salt turning into a salt lake.”

Mr Bury said the area in question was high in saline and gypsum.

"We got the product pretty late into the program so it was only just as we were finishing seeding," he said.

"We sowed the crop on June 19 at 55 kilograms per hectare, which is stock standard rate for that country I used with wheat, as it also goes on grain size and timing.

"It also had a 1916 SOA DAP blend of 100kg of fertiliser on it."

In part, he hoped the trial would enable him to bring that part of the paddock into use, with lentils planned next in the rotation.

"But they don't handle salt well at all, so that will be the next big test and hopefully it will work as well," he said.

"I don't think they'll grow there just yet but, since there is a stand there this year keeping the water table at bay, I might be able to.

"The plan was to use barley because it handles the salt better but because I got the product late and had already finished seeding barley, I left a little section and I wasn't actually thinking it was going to work this well."

He said he would likely use MaxSil again next year on barley, despite the rest of the paddock earmarked for lentils "to keep that stand going for a few more years".

He said the MaxSil was cost effective as it was sprinkled on the seed while feeding it through the auger.

"The cost was very good actually," he said.

"For the amount you use, it's very easy to handle as you're only putting a certain amount on not sowing it like a fertiliser rate.

"It was just really good to have something actually germinate there and start the process of fixing that soil."

He said their average yearly rainfall was about 300 millimetres but the water would run off into the trialed patch, especially in its pasture phase.

"I had a bit of moisture by then about 10 millimetres just beforehand and it was sown just in front of another rain," he said.

Reproduced by kind permission from Stock Journal