Warming air and soil temperatures alongside extending day length have prompted crop growth and development. Growers have responded by starting nitrogen & sulphur applications to oilseed rape, barley and “less forward” wheats. Nitrogen applications to more forward wheats should be delayed until mid-March to help manipulate tiller numbers and reduce lodging risk. The first spring [...]
The cold weather in February has certainly helped with keeping mildew under control in cereal crops and put a slight brake on the forward crops, we got as low as -8-9c. Due to the dry conditions most clients have been applying P&K for the last three weeks or so when ground was not too sticky. Spring [...]
Despite some cold nights earlier in the month the generally milder weather has allowed winter crops to grow on quietly. Winter barleys and some oilseed rape crops are starting to look as if they have used up all the currently available nitrogen. However, with the NVZ start date passed and with the ground being [...]
The cold spell put paid to plenty of cereal leaf and has definitely helped reduce the disease reservoir. Even so, yellow and brown rusts are still easy to find in many of our wheat crops, septoria is not just confined to the lower leaves, and mildew continues to be obvious. Another dry spring may relieve [...]
Another season begins, and already there is talk of drought and water shortages. It went until April last year before we talked of such things! The unusually dry winter, following on from a dry year last year, is going to pose many headaches as far as decision making is concerned. The first of these will [...]
The early warnings of hosepipe bans will be like music to my Scottish colleagues, as one thing last year gave them was plenty of water! A much overlooked benefit of dry weather, from the agronomist’s point of view, is how much easier it is to scout the land. Unfortunately, this usually means finding lots of [...]
Standard deep nitrogen coring, to measure soil mineral nitrogen (SMN), is producing some highly variable results. This is not surprising if you consider the factors that influence SMN levels in January/February. This year the most variable factor is the performance of the previous crop and its utilisation of nitrogen applied in spring 2011. In many [...]
Crops are all over the place in terms of growth stage and canopy size this year. The early drilled crops are carrying very large canopies and a lot of foliar disease, whilst some of the later drilled crops are short on biomass and will require nitrogen early to bring them on. In the wheat crops, [...]
Before Christmas I said that if we didn’t have a prolonged cold spell soon, with diseases creeping in to all cereal crops, we would be in for a very challenging spring. Well we’ve had our cold snap, and crops have certainly been held in check, but whether it has been prolonged enough to reduce disease [...]
The recent cold snap has thankfully put the brakes on crop growth after a long spell of mild weather. All crops generally look very well so now it is a case of maintaining this promising yield potential. Yellow rust was very evident in susceptible wheat varieties prior to the snowfall, particularly in more coastal areas. [...]
