Cutting wheat near Exeter
Troy Stuart is combining wheat today (10 August) at Clyst St Mary, Exeter, Devon, and is pleased with the results.
“We got on yesterday as soon as it dried out. We had an early start with Grafton, which is proving to be quite handy.”
A lot of the crop was reaching 10t/ha (4t/acre), and it would average not far off that, he said.
“It will be as good a wheat yield as we’ve seen here, and I was expecting it to be down.”
Bushelweights had fallen slightly after the rain, dropping from above 80kg/hl to about 78kg/hl, he added.
Mr Stuart had a little bit of rapeseed left to cut, which wasn’t quite fit after rabbit and bird damage earlier in the year.
But the Cabernet and Sesame had been consistently good, at about 4.7t/ha (1.9t/acre), with Cracker not quite so good on some poorer land.
Volume winter barley on light land had also done well, averaging over 7.4t/ha (3t/acre).
After the wheat and rapeseed, Mr Stuart had some oats which were ready to cut, and looked well.
“I think we’ve been fairly lucky in the South West; I didn’t think we’d had enough moisture, but I was obviously wrong.”
Crop: Winter wheat
Variety: Grafton
Area: 120ha (300 acres)
Yield: <10t/ha (4t/acre)
Crop: Oilseed rape
Varieties: Cabernet, Sesame and Cracker
Yield: 4.7t/ha (1.9t/acre)
Crop: Winter barley
Variety: Volume
Yield: >7.4t/ha (3t/acre)
