Snow in January covered crops, and allowed management plans to be completed. Now the snow has gone and crops are visible.
Last week saw an opportunity for the last few outstanding propyzamide and carbetamide applications on oilseed rape to take place. Rape crops appear to have come through the winter so far unscathed, but it is early days and it will be interesting to see if the extremely low temperatures will have effected some of the large canopy crops internally.
Residual herbicides applied to rape prior to Christmas appear to be working extremely well. The hard frosts seem to have taken care of any charlock, hopefully removing the need to use Fox (Bifenox) . The root structure on most crops I have looked at look are good. Crops going into winter with large canopies, will allow us to use lower rates of nitrogen, and this may be the first year when fungicides with growth regulator effects will be used on a larger percentages of the crop.
Winter cereals have differed in how they have come out of the winter. Some light land cereals have suffered with snow mould. Areas where there is manganese deficiency are showing, even though the seed was treated with a manganese seed dressing and foliar manganese was applied in autumn. As soon as conditions allow a foliar application of manganese will be applied - if and when ground conditions allow these crops will be rolled to consolidate the soil around the roots.
At present autumn applied herbicides appear to be working, but this could be early days. Due to the record amount of rainfall in November, they may have leached out of the area of activity, allowing weeds to germinate.
Where Atlantis was applied in the autumn results look pleasing, a pity more did not succeeded in getting it on. With wet cold soils, it will be some time before any spring applications occur.
At least the extreme cold weather will have arrested the development of some diseases in cereals. However growers should be aware that even though there are no visible symptoms at present , the inoculum is still the leaf tisssue of the crop.
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