R.U.M. Boosts Lupins 20%

When we videotaped the Jasper family's good-looking crop of lupin, John Jasper was pretty excited about the pod-count.

"Quite often lupins will abort nearly all of the flowers on the primary stalk. But we've got stalks with seven pods and that could increase yield potential of the crop by 20%", he said. "In fact, if we get 30 pods on the whole plant we think we're doing damn well!"

John wasn't a bad judge as events proved. Then again, John and his family have been farming on 'Jolma' in the Cunderdin area, east of Perth, for a while now, so he has local knowledge on his side. The Jasper's lupins had been sown at a rate of 100kg/ha after R.U.M. Liquid Plant Food had been applied as a seed-dressing at 3L/tonne of seed. Added fertiliser was 60kg/ha of Summit Pasture mix (P 18.2 - S 10.00 - Ca 11.5). The lupins were then top-dressed with a further 4L/ha of R.U.M. prior to flowering.

John said, "We like R.U.M. because it goes to work immediately whereas with urea we have to rely on rainfall to get the Nitrogen into the plant. It's easy to apply and you can put it on with a chemical which saves us time."

We're happy to report that, when John, and his sons Perry and Graham, harvested the lupins, yield hit 1.5 t/ha. The results was a .25 tonne improvement. The gross price was $166/tonne at the time. So at a return of $249/ha, the trial was well worthwhile to the Jaspers.

Worth filming - Peter Irwin (Beaulieu R.U.M.), Alan Hardman (R.U.M. Distributor) and John jasper ('Jolma') take a close-up look at an excellent lupin crop

Canola is big in the West

(like everything else)

John Vermeersch grows canola in Esperance, WA, and he'll tell you that if local yields are a bit lighter than those in the East... "you put in another thousand acres or so." That's typical WA thinking for you! So it was that John used R.U.M. Liquid Plant Food in 'a little trial' of 400ha (2 paddocks of 200ha each) of canola last season.

Planting 'Karoo', a triazine-resistant variety, allowed John to spray simazine and atrazine to control a mustard and turnip problem. For general 'knockdown', John put 2L/ha R.U.M. in with his glyphosate herbicide and achieved an excellent weekill rate. Nothing else was added to the tank-mix because R.U.M. acts like a 'wetter'.

When he direct-drilled his canola, John applied 80kg/ha of Microgold fertiliser but no urea or ammonium sulphate. Another 4L/ha R.U.M. went on at the 'rosette' stage making a total of 6L/ha R.U.M. on the crop.

John said, "We had a wet winter and I was worried about the N level. If you put too much on, and you get a dry finish, it'll just burn your crop off, so you've got to be careful. But I decided to sit on my hands and watch it grow."

Average rainfall at Esperance is around 15"-16" annually, but with the crop about 10 days from harvest, it had only 12" of rain. Nevertheless, the canola 'trial' came in at 1.4 tonne/ha. So John had read the weather correctly. In WA, Agricorp bases current canola payments on an oil content of 42%... with a scale of bonuses and discounts. John was on the bonus side with 43.4%... and not a bit of urea in sight.