At last rain has arrived. It’s been too late for many spring cereal crops in this area, but welcome none the less.

Crops have certainly turned a lot greener and lifted themselves off the floor, particularly the wheats. This, in turn, has increased the number of ear sprays being applied and has perhaps increased the yield forecasts for good wheats by 1 to 1.25t/ha, which is a lot better than we were first looking at.

Of course, with this rain we now have a lot of greenery appearing in the bottom of thin cereals and I suspect that a lot of pre-harvest glyphosate will be needed.

Oilseed rape crops have benefited from the swelling of seeds in the pods and although record yields I feel are not on the cards, some very respectable ones could be attained. Desiccation is not far off in the lighter soils and amongst the few early varieties.

Spring barleys, however, are not generally very pretty and in spite of the rain are still very short and thin. The prognosis is not good and to compound this I am now finding a lot of aphids in what is left of these crops. Anything that is going to suck the remaining life out of these crops has to be got rid of.

Sugar beet can almost be heard to be sighing with relief and just in time on the lighter soils. There are several crops, however, that are showing a lot of magnesium deficiency symptoms, though this may be a symptom of the dry and some of this may disappear with the rain, according to Brooms Barn.

I am getting reports of increasing numbers of myzus persicae which will need to be watched in relation to the autumn rape drillings, particularly if it is dry at drilling.