September 2011 Archives

Drilling is progressing at a fantastic pace due to settled weather. Good

seed-beds are being achieved with the earliest winter wheat crops now at the two- to three-leaf stage.

If no insecticide seed dressing has been used, such as Deter, then these early crops will soon need treating with a pyrethroid insecticide to control aphids. This can often be tank mixed with manganese where required.

Slug pressure so far has been low as seed-beds are generally good and conditions are dry. There has been a little slug grazing on wheat after oilseed rape so be on the lookout for damage until the crop has reached the three-leaf stage.

After a frustratingly late end to harvest most people managed to get their winter rape drilled and most is now growing away, albeit slowly.

I had my suspicions that something other than slugs was nipping it off below the surface when a colleague suggested he had the same suspicions and suggested it might be millipedes. Apparently young sugar beet plants get damaged by millipedes and on further inspection there did seem to be very high numbers. Any comments or observations on this would be most welcome.

Winter wheat is being drilled as I write and is going in very well with good seed-beds and plenty of moisture. Slug numbers are very high in places, especially after winter rape, and some fields have been treated pre-drilling with a reduced rate of pellets. If there are large areas of rape stubbles that are clean of volunteers I would suggest that closer inspection and remedial treatment is worthwhile.

Autumn fieldwork is proceeding well. Some growers have already finished drilling, some are yet to start.

There have been good conditions for false seedbeds to do their work, with occasional showers to keep the soil moist and producing a useful flush of brome and blackgrass, to be killed with glyphosate.

Oilseed rape has established well but is growing only slowly. It's difficult to see why, as the soil is warm and growth should be more rapid. Perhaps after the rain of this weekend and a warmer week to come, growth will accelerate. It's not too late to apply a small dose of nitrogen to crops if you feel it would help.

We have had a very smooth drilling period with little interference from the weather. I wish the same could be said about the chemical applications.

We seem to have had weeks of high winds. The fact that OSR broad-leaved weed sprays have been delayed may have compromised control - particular weeds that may cause concern are cranesbill and poppies. If these weeds are present I am considering the use of Bifenox, but this can only be applied under a Specific Off Label Application (SOLA). I hope the level of control will match last year's results. 

A trying harvest is at last done. On the plus side we have had some remarkable record-breaking yields. Oilseed rape crops have topped 5t/ha and all other crops apart from spring beans have yielded as well as ever. This despite a very dry spring when spring barley fields looked like fields in a desert in north Africa and the wind that never stopped blowing, drying the soil even more.

Nearly all the rape crop has now been drilled and the earlier-drilled fields are at the two-leaf stage, while later-drilled fields are the cotyledon leaf stage and struggling in dry soils. We need at least 16mm of rain to wet the dry dusty earth to help small plants to grow and more importantly to let the grass weeds and volunteers germinate before drilling cereal crops.

This spells serious problem for grass-weed control since high dormancy has been forecast and at present there is little chitting. It will be imperative to choose the right products for blackgrass control.

Another autumn and another crop year comes round again. Harvest is largely complete save for a few acres of linseed. Variety performance trials results have been digested and we are starting to chew the fat on some of the fungicide data. 

Variety selection is best made on five years' data rather than one - especially one like the season we have just had. Once again, farm performance of some varieties has exceeded variety trials figures, highlighting the difficulty of applying common management structures across a range of very different plant types. Finding varieties that suit your farm and learning how to grow them consistently well is integral to successful crop production.

More than 100 mm of August rain across much of my patch didn't exactly make for an easy harvest. But it has given us another promising start to the new cropping season, with oilseed rape plantings well up on previous years.

Most of our rape is now in and growing away. We grow a significant proportion of vigorous hybrids like DK ExPower and Excalibur which I'm comfortable to sow up to the third week of September.

Although slugs are becoming more evident, rapid crop development means a single well-timed application of pellets should be enough to see most crops safely through to the two to three true leaf stage. We're using higher quality pellets with low metaldehyde loadings wherever possible and, for particularly high-risk areas where a follow up is required, ferric phosphate, which SMART Farming trials have shown to be highly effective and compliant with the metaldehyde stewardship guidelines.

Weather is a UK obsession, undoubtedly so this season for the farming fraternity in the north. After a fine, dry April when spring-sown cereals and potatoes went into superb seedbeds we reached autumn with very little sunshine throughout the middle of the year.

In the east more settled weather is forecast allowing growers to keep to their planned schedule of autumn work.

Warm autumn days and moist soils have encouraged good emergence and establishment of most rapeseed; even later-sown crops drilled into good conditions are growing well. Cereal volunteers and grassweeds will continue to emerge and should be controlled before becoming competitive with the crop.

Memories of last season's disappointing cereal yields are still raw. They were a result of unfavourable weather conditions, beginning with wet weather in late September which led to delayed drilling into difficult seed-beds. Consequently this season drilling of first wheats has begun in earnest as growers take advantage of good conditions.

It's official - in the Midlands it is now the driest it has been since 1976. We would normally have had 20in (500mm) of rain by now, but we have only had half this amount.

As ever one has to take the rough with the smooth. Harvest was completed in record time with most combines parked up two to three weeks ago. Yields of winter OSR and winter wheat have been exceptional, with most breaking their long-term averages. It must be said that very light land yields have not been very good, never quite recovering from the early dry spell.

Oilseed rape drilling is finished and some has found moisture. Localised rainfall is all that makes the difference between crops germinating or not. Quite a few are just sitting in dust and will not germinate until we get a decent spell of rainfall.

Harvest enters its final chapter with the last remnants being gathered up. A long and protracted affair best summed up as a curates egg, good in parts. Comments in the press about record harvest are a little optimistic, and although I feel we will be on the right side of average I don't think a record crop is in store.

Commodity prices remain relatively strong for spot and future sales, giving more confidence nd the battle is now on to optimise winter plantings. Maximising wheat and rape acreages will be the goal but a wet, late harvest has already put us on the back foot.

Rape following barley is now up and away. Depending on type of establishment crops have either received a metazachlor-based product immediately after drilling or at expanded cotyledon. On min-tillage systems volunteer cereals have been targeted as well.

Catchy weather is dragging harvest out in some cases, affecting field work for following crops. Although many growers completed harvest during better weather at the very beginning of September there are still fields of wheat, beans and spring barley to cut at the time of writing.

The harvest, while being far from completed, has now progressed quite well on most units. Despite the very dry spell in March and April yields have held up well on all but the most drought-prone soils.

Many crops looked horrible until well into May when nitrogen that had been applied in April finally kicked in. For the second year in succession the harvest result on individual farms has had a lot to do with the moisture retentiveness of the soil, with many fields that are usually considered too wet giving the best yields.

Winter oilseed rape has yielded close to 5t/ha on a lot of farms with low biomass varieties such as ES Astrid giving yet another good showing with good ease of harvest as well. With straw prices high the rape haulm has also had a value this year which only serves to increase the gross margin on this already high-flying crop.

Harvest is finally drawing to a close with the last few fields being cut. Overall results have been better than hoped for. Heavy, moisture-retentive land has seen near record yields of oilseed rape and wheat. Rape on some farms has averaged as high as 5.5t/ha and first wheat as high as 12t/ha average.

Rape yields held up remarkably well on light land, but unfortunately wheat crops on brash or gravel proved disappointing with yields often down at about 6.5t/ha. Bushel weights across the board have been very good and as high as 86kg/hl on feed wheats.

Rape drilling is going well with 75% of the crop drilled so far. Initially slug activity looked low, but recent rains have increased activity. I have pelleted most crops drilled so far and the remainder will receive a dose of metaldehyde in the next few days.