drought recovery is when weed management
work really gets serious we often find
after the season breaks that all of a
sudden we have a lot of
a lot of plants that we never thought
grew in that area and often they are
weeds and they're purely there
because of limited ground cover
and so the weeds are basically space
invaders if there's a space
they will get they will grow there and
they'll grow there quickly you may have
noticed
in the hunter valley on the lighter
soils over the last couple of months
that there has been a blue haze and a
pungent smell
and that weed has been blue heliotrope
which for
many many years has been slowly
encroaching on our agricultural areas
within the
within the upper hunter and also moving
down into the lower hunter
we're starting to see more and more land
holders
having unsuccessful control so the
hunter local land services decided to
partner up with a local producer and
also
a local agronomist to work out which
were the best ways for us and the best
packages it's just not one package
there's multiple packages the best
package
that we can use to help assist land
holders control this
this invasive weed and to get their
farming systems productive again
we're our property is kings lynn
mariowar
we run beef cattle and uh sheep on
four thousand two hundred acres we
realized
blue hurley trobe was uh an issue
just after we bought the place we had
adjusted cattle on here
and um we started looking through some
of
our lighter country and all it was just
a massive
healing a blue heely trade
then we started um spraying it and
without seeking advice first up and
we wasted a substantial amount of money
and then i got onto our local lands and
um
we went from there and uh we got bob
free vayne down as well to
give us some advice and we went from
there and
since then we haven't looked back and
that was
just on about six years ago now
here we are in a patch of blue
heliotrope as you can see the distinct
mode flower
in full seed at the moment nearly
reaching maturity
it's got a really distinct smell about
it you can smell it before you see it
and it's just starting to creep along
the ground from its main
branching there so it's got a really
sticky seed that's just about to reach
maturity here now
this really does aid in it spreading
throughout the countryside with
feral animals and even livestock so
something to be really
wary of when you're walking through a
paddock driving through a paddock and
moving your livestock around that that
you can spread this seed so easily
you can see the big taproot um helping
extract moisture from the soil from the
sandy soil here
at marywall a lot of landholders have
used cultural practices so ploughing to
help in its control
this can be aided by the use of
herbicides to to aid the fallow to help
the control of this
this weed in areas where
the blue heliotrope is a predominant
plant
for livestock to to eat it is just
please be aware that
the blue heliotrope is toxic to animals
from horses all the way through to sheep
it does contain alkaloids
that if that's the only thing that the
the animal has to eat
it'll end up damaging their liver over
time and end up dying from
alkaloids it is blue heliotrope
generally
is unpalatable to livestock but when
there's nothing else to eat that's
that's what though they will eat please
the horses are the most susceptible
to blue heliotrope um with the other end
of the skull being sheep at least
susceptible
to but they do get affected if there
isn't anything for them to eat they will
get affected
by the ingestion of blue heliotropes so
please be cautioned
at the moment there are paddocks with
nearly 80 to 90
blue heliotropes so i would be concerned
about putting animals especially hungry
animals
in on those paddocks and please consult
your agronomist or your local land
services about how to get control of
that blue heliotrope
before you start putting in animals into
those paddocks
blue heliotrope is toxic both fresh and
dried and also
please be cautious if you are going and
spraying it with some herbicides
that actually increases makes that plant
a little bit more palatable for the
animal to eat but it still is just as a
top as toxic
cattle are very success susceptible to
it and there are known deaths in the
upper hunter
from blue heliotropes so please be
careful when you're making decisions of
what
what stock are grazing what paddocks
[Music]
in 2016 we took a bus load of
landholders to binaway
to learn how they've been able to manage
uh blue heliotrope bob freeband
was the agronomist there on the day and
he really did
show us tools that we could engage on
our property to fight
blue heliotrope what works and what
doesn't work and out there we saw the
how effective the tropical grasses are
at competing against it and and that's
where we learnt
about how to fight fire with fire as bob
would put it
and cole really has implemented that
strategy
and on his farm and even though they're
bigger paddocks out there and wider open
spaces he's managed to
just time it down to that package to fit
his farming system
and modify it to fit his needs the trip
to binaway
um the outcomes from that trip as you
can see here with coles had a huge
impact and
he came home and and he made a plan made
a plan sat down and discussed a plan
with his agronomist and also
his farm business it's just not coal
it's um he's got sons working on this
property as well
and they sat down and they worked out
what's their best plan of attack
and gave it a timeline and they've gone
forth from there
once you've identified the extent of
severity of your blue heliotrope problem
you can start designing your long-term
plan of attack the key to success
against blue heliotrope is to set a plan
and then stick to it
don't get ahead of yourself this plan
will take years
not months
[Music]
blue heliotrope is a summer growing
wheat so we generally start to see it in
the spring and
it'll go all the way through the back
end back end of autumn and that's where
when we start to
bring pastures in as a competition for
it our tropicals
are the preferred type of pasture an
arable country where we can replant
um and that they just they are just as
aggressive as a blue heliotrope but
there is
a a way and a means of getting
successful
tropical pastures established in
paddocks don't think going and sowing a
tropical plaster it's going to come up
then as soon as you sow it just like a
paddock of oats there's a
there is a plan and a process involved
in that because tropical grasses are so
competitive and so good at utilizing
rainfall events and turning that
moisture
those rainfall events into feed into
vegetative growth
they've proven how good they are at
controlling our summer broadleaf weeds
one of our best fighters that we have
against the blue heliotrope issue that
we have here in the upper hunch on
adelaide
soils is seeing if we can get some
tropicals into the system because
once we get these in and yes we do need
to follow that plan of managing
our managing our
summer summer grasses um
such as the liver sea grass and barnyard
grass
but once we manage those and if there's
only blue heliotrope that's left in the
paddock we can
manage to get some of these tropicals in
and and they've
proven to get up quite quickly they'll
out compete
a blue heliotrope for moisture they will
shatter them so therefore the blue
heliotrope
can no longer access get as much
sunlight to photosynthesize
and turn your country that was generally
unproductive
due to weeds into getting some
productivity back in them
and as we mentioned the tropicals are a
little bit easier to
get established in some of our lighter
soils where our blue heliotrope issue
is rather than our heavy soils and the
varieties that you choose in there
is a little bit different to what you're
seeing here but they are
one of the biggest tools and best tools
they're just like the shift that we have
in the shed
probably one of the best tools that you
can have to fight against one of our
most common weeds and unproductive
weights herbicide controlled blue
heliotrope
in high plant populations is essential
but it's only
one part of the management strategy blue
heliotrope is not an easy plant to
control in pastures with a chemical
application
so for this reason we partner with local
agronomist dan clydesdale from
clydesdown rural
on a blue heliotrope demonstration here
at coles
so what we did with those 13 different
treatments across across the site
here with a six metre boom spray with a
seven metre center so we had a small gap
between each treatment
so they could really stand out um was
sprayed with yellow
aixr nozzles at 100 liters of water rate
to really help with the coverage we did
two
two standard treatments one one
treatment was
two days after the first rainfall event
and the second treatment
was after two 35 degree days to really
put a stress on the on the blue
heliotrope
the chemical control options that we saw
demonstrated at coal
coal banks proved how the importance of
getting
the right chemical mix and the right
chemical rate
also spray coverage was essential in
that we're getting
optimum coverage of the weed of the
weeds leaf and that we weren't getting
over shadowing from other plants
the timing was very important in that we
needed to be
spraying the plant when it was fresh and
actively growing
and also water rate purely to get that
coverage again
there are many options available for
blue heliotrope control
so please contact your local agronomist
and or us at the
hunter local land services to find a
chemical control that meets your system
there is a biological control option for
this plant which is the blue heliotrope
beetle it was introduced in the 80s
at a site not far from here due to the
seasonal conditions
that that beetle is struggling and
actually finding difficult to find it at
the moment
it doesn't survive in our hot open
paddocks and especially on some of this
sandy country it gets very hot very
quickly
and the survival of the beetle is quite
low
it's best spot within the system for the
blue heliotrope beetle is down in our
riparian zones in our creeks and our
gullies
where it is quite moist and the survival
of that beetle is is higher
but again due to the the years we've
just had
um even those areas down there have been
extremely dry and the survival of the
beetle has been very low so it may take
time for those beetle numbers to to ramp
up again
um and let's hope the season improves
but at the moment
we're very limited in in beetle numbers
[Music]
our breeding operation is uh selling
beers or
selling into woolies depends on the
seasons
and uh we run a few we run a couple
hundred head of um
use as well crossbred views we started
off with a plan
to um just do a lighter country
to clean up the heli trobe um we
we seek advice from bob freebain and our
local
land services and
we sprayed philly trobe out with
roundup a couple of times but our
biggest problem we made a few mistakes
we didn't follow up when we should have
and we had dry seasons
which you might as well sit down under a
tree
and then the next thing after you've got
your country pretty clean you can
we we limed a lot of our country which i
think it brings the ph up in your lower
soils
um and we use chook manure and
in a little bit heavier country use
gypsum which has
been a big help and um
the main thing is when to sow
and also not to sew on your first lot of
rain
to spray again to get rid of all your
summer grasses
because otherwise when you do plant your
tropicals
your summer grasses are out feeding your
tropicals
and some will come through but you will
lose a percentage of them but
i did not realize how long that it would
take
before we could sort of get grasses and
up and running um
you know the seasons the seasons were
against us
and it just didn't happen the way i
thought it would
and when you get when you actually start
preparing a paddock
you can't just give it one spray and
forget it you've got to keep
onto it and onto it and onto it and
the more time and effort you put into
that paddock
the better results you'll get and um
the better the better results is your
dollars
and your feed for your cattle and the um
your weeds if you can click get it
spotless
yet tropicals will do the rest to
control blue heliotrope you need a plan
and it is a long-term process and
the process is shortened once you get
your tropicals established properly
um even when you do get your tropicals
up and running
you'll still after 12 18 months
still have a spot spray on your quad
bike or whatever you got
and just after you've grazed them
just grab just just poke around them and
just give them a squirt
if there's any rubbish in there and uh
you'll be miles in front but we have
learned a lot just through practical
experience and the cost of things
trying to take shortcuts there's no
shortcuts
and have a definite plan and if your
agronomist said or whoever you're using
says to do something do it because he
he or she has probably been through the
mill and knows what's going on
well our long-term goal is to have
probably 50
50 of our lighter country
under tropicals just to eliminate blue
heely trade
so you can access this information by
visiting the hunter local land services
website
please do not hesitate to call one of
our officers
and ask to speak to someone from the
agriculture extension team or myself
sarah giblin
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