The drilling in this area is nearly up to date - that’s to say it is out of the bag but not necessarily in the ground. The recent wet conditions have led to some indifferent seed-beds with some fields resembling a fly-through restaurant owing to the number of pigeons on them. Fortunately, high seed rates have beeen used [...]
Since my last contribution, we have experienced a largely dry month with just the odd day of rain. Consquently, October drilling have gone into near perfect seedbeds. The weather has also been conducive to rapid germination and establishment. Winter cereal crops are looking extremely well going into late autumn. Most oilseed rape crops, depsite being planted relatively late, have made excellent [...]
Harvest is well under way and in some cases finished although it has been very much a stop-start affair, depending on where you are in the country. Rain has made conditions somewhat tricky in places although generally the amount of soil going into store has been minimal. Size and quality seems to be extremely [...]
Having heard recent reports of high levels of phoma in oilseed rape in the eastern counties, I wondered how long it would take before it reached us – and reach us it has. Some situations have levels higher than I have ever seen, with 50-60% of plants infected and up to 10 lesions on some [...]
Green shoots from the second wave of cereal drilling are starting to appear and growers are back in charge of the autumn workload.Slug activity continues and growers should monitor fields carefully, particularly where seed-beds are cloddy or were too wet to roll. Later drilled, slower emerging crops are particularly vulnerable and growers should also look [...]
Careful management of oilseed rape will be vital this autumn; especially with early-drilled crops which have established very well and are now at six true leaves and beyond. Where phoma is only just starting to appear, we’ll be getting on with metconazole or tebuconazole in the next week or so to optimise rooting and lateral [...]
Ten days of dry weather have allowed for application of pre and early post-emergence herbicides to cereals and for maize harvesting and subsequent drilling to go ahead. Beans are now being planted and must be sprayed with pre-emergence herbicides, there being very little available for post-emergence broad-leaved weed control. Grass weeds can be dealt with post-emergence if necessary, using contact [...]
There have been two distinct drilling windows for wheat this season. September-drilled wheats went into excellent seedbeds and pre-emergence herbicides where applied have worked very well. In some places it is possible to see the effect of extended heavy rainfall after residual herbicide application. Where blackgrass has emerged through the pre-em treatments, we will be looking to tidy this [...]
Fairly reasonable weather in the past four weeks has allowed a lot of catching up to take place. Most fields have been cleared, although I have seen the odd field of spring barley or oats still to cut. Potato harvesting goes on apace, lifting conditions in general being okay, with yield and quality promising [...]
Oilseed rape crops have established well with very few problems from slugs. Leaf miner damage has been much higher than other years, but it looks much worse than its effect on the crop. Phoma is appearing in crops now but none are anywhere near the one in ten plant infected threshold. Therefore, fungicides are likely [...]
