Andrew Blenkiron with some of his green waste compost.
Ground conditions at Chillington Farm, Codsall Wood, near Wolverhampton are very wet after 50mm of rain and 125mm of snow over the past two weeks, writes Andrew Blenkiron.
Very cold winds and night time temperatures well below freezing are holding things back a little. That said I have noticed a real difference in colour of crops. Oilseed rape is massing up ready to burst into colour, the hedgerow buds are bursting, the swallows have arrived and Jennifer has had to cut the lawn! So I would say that spring has eventually arrived.
We have made reasonable progress with land work, playing catch up after drying winds with second nitrogen dressings applied to cereals and rape. They have now received 110kg/ha and 70kg/ha of sulphur. Winter barley has had all it's going to get at 150kgN/ha and 90kgS/ha.
Spring barley drilled in early March is up and away and has received 100kgN/ha.
Darren has also been busy with the compound fertiliser with cereals and beans receiving 350kg/ha of 0:20:30, and the rape has had MOP to balance soil reserves in accordance with last summer's soil tests. I adopted a spring-based application policy about three years ago.
John hasn't been quite as fortunate in getting going with the sprayer. He managed to treat the rape with Proline (prothioconazole) about two weeks ago and made a start on about 100ha of wheat T0 sprays at the end of last week with a cocktail of 0.06litre/ha of Boxer (florasulam), 0.5 of Mirage (prochloraz), 0.5 of Bravo (chlorothalonil), 2 of chlormequat and 2 of manganese.
But then the sprayer wheel came off, quite literally, when the bearing went. Still, he managed to get the Humber finished - a good job because it is romping away and just about at GS31 already.
Compost is about to be applied at 30t/ha on land for maize, fodder beet and stubble turnip/fodder rape. We'll try to plough this in and have these crops sown by the end of the month.
Game strips have been topped off and we're waiting for glyphosate to arrive to give them a clean up prior to muck spreading and then ploughing.
The lapwings have eventually started to nest on the Countryside Stewardship summer fallow and in the winter beans. There are probably about ten nests so far, so let's hope that Jeff, the keeper, can manage to get on top of magpie and rook control. I'm afraid that he can't do anything to stop the badgers taking the eggs though.
We have 16,000 broadleaved mixed species trees all in and ready to grow, so John and Al can turn their attention to other matters.
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