A GOOD moisture profile and a smaller than expected summer crop will see an enormous winter crop planted across Central Queensland in the next month.
Ivan and Karen Gowlett farm about 1290 hectares on Eldorado, Capella, and share-farm a further 1600ha.
Last season's winter chickpea and wheat harvest in Central Queensland was a drawn-out, sorry affair for most growers and the Gowletts were no exception, with most of their crop downgraded.
The Gowletts have been growing crops at Eldorado since 1993 when they made the change from dairying.
They will look to plant about 1400ha of Baxter and Gregory wheat, and about 400ha of chickpeas next month.
The Gowletts, unlike many growers across Central Queensland, were lucky enough to be able to plant a decent summer crop of about 890ha of Buster and Maxi sorghum and 200ha of Crystal mungbeans.
They are growing the mungbean variety for the first time.
"We're getting a lot of summer grass at the moment so we just put the mungbeans in to take the summer grass out during that growing period," Mr Gowlett said.
Mr Gowlett said they would like to see another 50mm of rain before they started their winter plant.
"We've got plenty of subsoil moisture but we will just need a top-up," he said.
Mr Gowlett is hoping this season doesn't play out like last year, when they harvested all the way into the first week of December before finally pulling the pin.
He said they ended up leaving almost 1200ha of contracted winter crop in the ground last season.
"The chickpeas were also badly affected with mould," he said.
Mr Gowlett expects there to be some difficulties with sourcing chickpea seed across Central Queensland this year, given much of the crop was downgraded last year and seed cannot be brought in from other areas because of a voluntary embargo.
This voluntary embargo is in place to protect Central Queensland from ascochyta blight.
Mr Gowlett has about 40 tonnes of chickpea seed on hand, which he will do a germination test on before planting.
