Many wheat crops have had the good fortune of having sufficient moisture at critical times during their spring growth and are looking promising – although very few are thick enough. Disease pressure has remained low with fungicide spray timings and weather conditions being favourable wheat crops have four to five disease free leaves.

Only mildew can be found at low levels on stems of  some varieties, especially Solstice. Growth regulation has been difficult this season with crops being very short in height early in the spring and missing one growth regulator, have now started to grow at a rapid rate in early summer. Time will tell if this will lead to lodging nearer to harvest.

T3 is now being applied with low rate strobe and triazole mixtures being popular. Grassweed control has been variable with few products achieving high levels of control on difficult blackgrass populations.

Winter barley is looking well and disease has remained low, but crops much shorter in straw this season. With blackgrass and brome very difficult to control in barley good planning for next seasons cropping is going to be critical.

Oilseed Rape flowering is almost complete and most crops have podded well. There have been exceptions to this, with some varieties having very poor early pod set, mostly on lighter chalky less fertile soils. This was also compounded with  the worst levels of early pollen beetle attack seen in recent years.

Downy Mildew has just started to appear in spring beans and needs spraying with Folio Gold as soon as possible.