This year, Brendan Moloney's family is celebrating 130 years on their property near Maitland in South Australia. Fifteen years ago the traditional farming mix of sheep-wheat-barley changed to include canola-peas-beans and now lentils.

But new crops can bring new challenges to farming practices... and with challenge, the ability to 'think on your feet' can make a big difference to annual profits. Brendan, a Beaulieu R.U.M. user for four years, recalls the 2000 season, "We planted some Aldinga lentils in late June."

"They started OK, but then we received 112mm of rain in 5 days and it leached some chemicals into the root zone. The crop looked stunted and yellow... bloody terrible."

"More chemicals were not the answer so I sprayed it with 4L/ha of R.U.M.. Well, it didn't look back."

"Last season (2001) I sowed lentils again and decided to use R.U.M. at 5L/ha with 115kg/ha MAP. I started with 1.5L/ha R.U.M. with my glyphosate... 1.5L/ha R.U.M. with my pre-emergent... and 2L/ha R.U.M. with my broadleaf pre-emergent because I had to spray in windy conditions and needed something that would reduce drift. So far so good. It was a wet season and disease was everywhere so I decided to included R.U.M. with my fungicide. I sprayed 3 times and put in 1L/ha of R.U.M. each time. By now I'd used over 8L/ha of R.U.M. instead of 5L."

Brendan's lentils finally yielded an impressive 3.7 tonnes/ha, about '5 bags/acre' better than the district average.

And, as he explained, "The extra 3L of R.U.M. cost me $14/ha and returned $500/ha." Now that's really thinking on your feet.

Seed dressing with Beaulieu R.U.M.

Bill Grover, 'Hillside Farm', Bindi Bindi WA, puts R.U.M. on his seed oats. "I use R.U.M. at 4L/tonne seed and definitely get earlier emergence and more plant vigour."

Herb Ware, Darling Downs, QLD, sprays R.U.M. on his sunflower seed. "It looked like the sunflower seed had germinated twice, the strike was that good."

Don Cameron, Narrabri, NSW, dresses his wheat with R.U.M.. "With a seed coating of R.U.M. my wheat was up and away. It beat the weeds and had first crack at the nutrients." Don sprays neat R.U.M. on his seed using a pressurised knapsack set to deliver "about 4-5L/tonne of grain." As his grain truck tips seed into the auger hopper he sprays with R.U.M. so by the time it reaches the top of the auger it's thoroughly mixed.

Ron Bingham, Williams, WA, did his own seed dressing trials on Mortlock oats. Ron says, "I found that seed dressing with R.U.M. gets the crop off to a stronger start and it's then able to withstand competition and 'setbacks' better." R.U.M. was mixed with water at the rate of 4L R.U.M. with 5L water. Seed for control plot was sprayed with 9L of water to maintain an accurate seeding rate.

Ron applied the R.U.M. as he augered it into the combine. He used a 12V diaphragm pump and a high volume boomspray nozzle calibrated to deliver 9L/mixture tonne of seed. The spray was applied at the low end of the auger. He calculated that for every $2.50/ha he spent, the seed dressing returned him $62.50/ha based on that year's contract price for Mortlock of $145/tonne. Remember seed dresses with R.U.M. "as well as" the normal 5L/ha, not "instead of!"