Recently in North Category

At last, a nice bit of winter though there's no promise of it lasting, but let's hope. Up until last week, we'd only had seven frosts with only one before Christmas - on 7th November.  Therefore, we have to expect significant aphid numbers and a serious threat of BYDV - unless this bit of winter lasts and particularly if we get serious cold without snow cover. It's not been cold enough yet and snow is coming.

Oilseed Rape crops have thick, strong deep roots and a nice rosette from which to develop new growth.  Thankfully, all our efforts to control Cabbage Root Fly appear to have worked as all crops inspected since New Year are free from this damaging pest.  However, I am still expecting to see crops which were not treated in autumn taken out in spring - as happened last year.  Phoma & light leaf spot levels are very low so, despite all the commercial hype, they don't require any treatment.

Much improved weather in the past few weeks has given growers an opportunity to attempt to catch up with winter ploughing. However, in late lifted potato fields where soil structure was more or less destroyed, gentle handling will be required to get them back into order to plant spring barley.

On the whole autumn sown crops have improved since the turn of the year due to the generally clement growing conditions. Winter barley crops that had shown typical yellow patches in the autumn due to waterlogged soils have greened up well. Mildew can be found at low levels which will require treatment, along with a net blotch/rhyncosporium spray plus a top up of manganese when ground conditions allow.

Winter wheat crops are generally more dense than I care to see. A robust growth regulator programme will be the order of the day probably commencing with the T0 fungicide treatment. 

November has passed like a scene in the Bill Murray film Groundhog Day with every day being a repeat of the last one, dull, dry and still. This makes your friendly agronomist look a fool as every week he declares "that's it for the year, put the sprayer away we won't get any more spray days!" This is followed the following week by "let's spray that late drilled wheat". 

All crops generally look very well as the long run of mild weather continues. With very little rain in the past month most autumn spray programmes have now been completed.

A lot of Atlantis has been applied to small blackgrass in ideal conditions so hopefully control will be maximised. The main issue affecting cereals at present is the high levels of disease, particularly mildew.

Most barley crops are carrying some mildew but varieties such as Cassia, Cassata and Saffron are suffering particularly badly. With such mild weather the mildew has had a free run with no frosts to check disease development. Although exceptional, some crops of barley will warrant a mildewicide so that the barley plants can maintain shoot numbers, biomass and ultimately yield.

On the whole, crop establishment in North Yorkshire has been very good. Rainfall for September was 43mm and October is 64mm leading to near ideal growing conditions with only one frost.

However, as the year draws to a close, we are still 250mm of rain short of our long-term average and with the long range forecast predicting a dry winter this could provide some interesting challenges for 2012.

At long last soil temperatures are falling and the opportunity to apply residual graminicides is here. Heavy soils with grassweed burdens must be the priority and, although not ideal, this will often be tank mixed with a fungicide. Broad leaf weed problems in oilseed rape are much more difficult to deal with as the options available are very limited. Bifenox will be applied where suitable and, coupled with some helpful weather can, solve some brassica issues.

The vast majority of oilseed rape and cereals crops look really well. The exception has been patchy emergence of cereals on the heavier land but these areas are now beginning to fill in.

In wheat attention now turns to using Atlantis (mesosulfuron-methyl and iodosulfuron-methyl) plus a residual partner when the blackgrass has 1-3 leaves. This timing is proving to be tricky where crop emergence has been patchy as some parts of the field are ready to apply Atlantis now and in other areas the crop has only just emerged. 

In fields where sterile brome is a problem it would be best to apply herbicides such as Broadway Star (pyroxsulam + florasulam) in the autumn rather than spring to gain best control. In terms of broad-leaved weed control oilseed rape volunteers have grown quite large due to the warm weather and volunteer bean populations are high due to problems harvesting due to low pod set. These will be controlled with more contact-acting herbicides.  

Fine sowing conditions for many in the North West, with plenty of moisture for good establishment, has seen most farmers finish sowing and some are sprayed-up already.

Most of Cheshire has never stopped and most of the drilling that's left is after maize and potatoes. Further north, the picture isn't so rosy. Growers in Lancashire who were delayed with harvest are suffering the knock-on effect of delayed sowing, as it's been too wet in the last fortnight and more rain is coming now.

The hidden menace for most is insect pests - cabbage root fly on OSR and aphids carrying BYDV on cereals.

There are still areas of crop to cut in the later and more northern regions. Many fields have got straw lying in the bout; farmers fortunate enough to have made bales cannot move them due to the fragile state of the ground. Deep ruts caused by combines, grain trailers and balers abound. All this will have quite an impact on those growers trying to establish second wheats and on farms where continuous wheat has become the norm.