THEY might have missed out on a sorghum crop because of the dry summer, but the Parkinson family are making up for it with 2400 hectares of winter crop that is up and away on their farm at Dulacca on the western Downs.
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In a staggered planting from early April to the third week in June that included a mix of dry sowing and moisture-seeking techniques, the Parkinsons have put in 1700ha of Spitfire and Baxter wheat, 520ha of Hatrick chickpeas, 100ha of Grimmet barley and 100ha of Aladdin oats this year.
The crops were sown with a new 15.25m Flexicoil ST820 planter set up for zero-till on 47cm rows.
Farming manager John Stevens said the oats went in in early April, followed by barley and a portion of the wheat crop that was sown by moisture seeking to a depth of 13 to 18cm because it had turned dry.
Then another 320ha of wheat was dry sown before a fall of 35mm of rain in late May allowed them to plant the rest of the crop.
“With the crops sown by moisture seeking, the chickpeas are really good, the barley is good – but the deep planted wheat is only alright,” he said.
“The wheat struggled to get out of the ground because we were going 5 inches (13cm) deep.
“But the barley came up alright and we got a really good result with the chickpeas.
“Before we planted the chickpeas, we ran Kelly Chains across the paddock to knock the stubble down and level it off, and that seemed to work really well.”
The chickpea crop follows the success of last year’s chickpeas that were double cropped into sorghum country and yielded 1.75 tonnes/ha.
