Gordon Couger wrote in message
news:3e5f17a9_3@newsfeed...
there is a saying I cannot quite remember about the value of a peck
of
March dust. Basically if you can get dust in march it means you have
the
possibility of a decent seedbed, shortage of water is not even
thought
of as a problem.

It's a lot cheaper to lose a crop to dry weather over here than it is
to wet
weather. On my wife's place in west Texas the dry land cotton was
dusted in.
For those of you that get rain regularly that is planted in dry ground
and
wait for a rain to bring it up. When it got a shower to get it up at
wind
evaporated the moisture before it could meet the moisture a few inches
below
the surface and the cotton sprouted and died. I have had the happen a
time
or two as well. It won't happen again on that place it will have the
drip
irrigation installed it by the end of next week, if it doesn't rain.

funnily enough we have the phrase "puddled in" where things are sort of
wet and the seed bed isn't really good enough but you know fine well
that it isn't going to get any better.

It should take the yield from 300 pounds per acre to better than 2,000
pounds per acre.

Even here we had one chap who did a bit of irrigation, just to ensure
grass got the absolute optimum during April/May, and he showed an
economic return. Then the Environment agency started asking if he had an
abstraction licence and that would have made it uneconomic.
Your increase is impressive.


--
Jim Webster

"The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind"

'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami'


Gordon