Good rain a seeding springboard

Pictured with employee Beau Drinnigan (left) and farm manager Piet Van Zyl, Tom is having to slow seeding down to ensure his cereal crops have a suitable flowering window later this year.

"We start on the 15th every year and it was a bit wet so we waited for it to dry out for a couple of days and then got into it," he said.

"We hope to finish by May 25. We probably could finish a bit earlier if we really wanted to, but we're trying to spread it out a bit.

"This is probably a bit earlier than we've started cereals before, but by spreading out seeding we get a better flowering window."

A 40mm rain in December was followed by 100mm in January and a chance to hit the weeds.

Follow-up rains between 5mm and 20mm have since kept things moist into seeding.

"We've been a bit lucky, we nearly got too wet, if we'd have had another rain three or so weeks ago it would've been a worry," he said.

"But we haven't gotten bogged yet."

The continuous cropping operation, which trades "a few sheep during summer" works on a canola, wheat and barley rotation split into thirds.

The trio are performing a second knockdown with a Paraquat, Treflan and Sharpen mix and are aiming to get the paddocks as clean as possible.

"We've just got a little bit of marshmallow that didn't quite die in the first knockdown because the summer was so wet and the marshmallow got a fair go on," Tom said.

"We've knocked out everything already once and we're doing the double knock to take advantage of the great start we've had."

Barley sowing started last week and Tom said things were going well.

"We've had about 190mm for the year so far, so that's wonderful," he said.

It is a similar story across most zones in WA, except the northern part of the Geraldton zone as the dry continues.