LUXIMO® ON FARM: David Hurn
2024/2025
About David
David is a third-generation farmer. He went to Eastern Agricultural College to study agriculture for four years, including a gap year which he spent in the United States. On finishing college, David spent another year overseas, harvesting green beans up and down the eastern seaboard, from Florida to New York state. He returned to the UK to work on the 150ha family farm in Norfolk.
Fast forward to now, and David has adopted min-till, the use of cover crops and a robust approach to black-grass management. While there’s a reduced tillage system in place, David uses the plough rotationally, or after sugar beet if the season has been wet.
With recent high input costs and lower prices, margins have been the core focus in the last few years. However, with costs coming down, David’s attention is back on yields, whilst maintaining an eye on margins.
Varietal choice is important to David and in 25/26 he’ll be growing Beowulf, Bamford, Dawsum and Typhoon.
Black-grass
Black-grass pressure isn’t as high as on some farms, but any weed count poses a significant threat. “We used to grow potatoes which meant the rotation was wider and, with few effective chemical options, black-grass has become an increasing issue,” explains David.
“We’re using a wide range of cultural tools in combination with chemical options to a keep a lid on the issue as best we can. It’s a continuing war of attrition.”
David is using stale seedbeds and delayed drilling, aiming to get, and spray-off, two flushes before drilling autumn crops. Hand-rogueing tidies up any surviving black-grass in early summer.
Mowing a meter along the outside edge of fields twice each summer removes any other seeding grassweeds, preventing them from getting into the crop.
“I don’t have resistant ryegrass in our fields yet and I don’t want any!” he says.
Rotation
Sitting on the heavy silts of the Wash, the farm’s rotation has changed in recent years. Today, it revolves around vining peas which are grown one year in seven. The other crops - winter wheat, sugar beet and spring barley - fit around the peas.
Ahead of the spring crops, David has started sowing cover crops: “We’ve a four species in the mix – clover, phacelia, buckwheat and linseed. There’s a fine balance to be achieved. We want the cover crop to be competitive against the black-grass but not so much that it prevents germination. Otherwise, when we desiccate the cover crop, we’ll find a big flush of black-grass just before or after drilling the cash crop.”
Longer term, David is hoping the cover crops will improve organic matter and soil structure, meaning land drains better and is less ‘habitable’ for the black-grass.
Historically, David’s herbicide programmes have centred around Crystal with diflufenican (DFF).
That has changed dramatically in the last 2 years with the launch of Luximo®. He used Luximo® across the board for the first time last year, and again in 22/23. In 24/25 David returned to a flufenacet based herbicide programme in two fields. The rest of the winter wheat acreage was treated with Luximo.
“Last autumn I bought a new drill. To iron out any niggles before we got too far into the autumn, it was important to get it set up and tried. I drilled one field after vining peas at the end of September and another beginning of October. Those fields don’t have a history of black-grass and they’d had glyphosate to desiccate the peas, so I decided to use a flufenacet based herbicide treatment rather than Luximo.
“That earlier drilled field has a smattering of black-grass, while the later drilled is clean. It shows both how important drilling date is, as well as the need for the best herbicide programme.
“Everywhere else had Luximo and with hindsight, it all should have had Luximo.”
2024/2025 Season
David feels that while last autumn went well overall, with hindsight he drilled earlier than he needed to,
“At the end of September we had 70mm of rain and I was concerned we’d have another wet autumn,” he recalls.
“I wanted to wait another week but with the early rainfall we’d had, I felt like I needed get started. Drilling got underway on 7th October. As it turned out, we could have been drilling in November but it takes a brave man to hold out that long after getting 70mm at the beginning of the season.”
The relatively dry conditions through the autumn, winter and spring hindered black-grass emergence on the farm.
“Germination has been quite protracted this year. For example, we drilled a field of vining peas in April, shortly after 20mm rain, and black-grass suddenly started appearing.”
Looking ahead
While David does have some black-grass, he is not unduly concerned. Following last autumn’s experience, however, he’ll be returning to Luximo across the whole farm.
“I’m sure that if I’d used Luximo in that early drilled pea field I’d have seen better control and less black-grass, so this autumn I’ll be using Luximo across all the winter wheat acreage.
David highlights that while he has got some black-grass, after years of cultural controls and use of robust herbicide programmes, the situation isn’t bad, it just needs keeping on top of.
“Obviously, I’d like zero black-grass but there’s nowhere that I’m re-considering putting in a second wheat - with delayed drilling and Luxinum + diflufenican + Avadex, of course.”
