East: Crops moving

The inevitable has happened – “we could do with a little rain” has been whispered in my ear. Indeed this is so for (a) some of the recently drilled spring crops and (b) recent applications of fertiliser, but the winter crops have at last got moving, though they have slowed up in the last week with the cold nights.

Early drilled wheats are either at, or approaching T1 stages, and the importance of getting the T1 spray in good time cannot be stressed enough if a T0 had not been put on. Although disease levels look low, the spores are there and it is easy to find the odd plant’s lower leaves covered in yellow rust.

With T0s, this will be covered, but make sure to give a robust treatment at T1 if you didn’t get one on. The varieties in this area are predominately yellow rust prone so focus on this, but septoria is also prevalent.

Interesting to see some of the tips of some SU treated wheats
reacting to the cold and giving some white tips to some leaves which
appear to be trapped, These leaf sheaths can be pulled off but, but the
overall effect will be white tipping on some plants, this has been seen
before and not confined to any particular SU.

Some difficulties in controlling pollen beetle in rape have led
to some beetles being sent away for resistance testing and the need for
a different chemical active to control them. Sclerotinia is now
uppermost in thoughts on the rapes that are beginning to flower. Keep
watching the monitoring tools on the web.

I am very impressed this year with the evenness and speed of
germination of the earlier drilled sugar beet and this I think is due to
the X beet treatment which to my observations is far better than the
Advantage treatment. It is hoped that it will help where some capping is
occurring on the later drilled crops.

I am finding an awful lot of orache emerging particularly where
muck has gone on, this must be dealt with early because if that gets a
hold it is difficult to control and costly.

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