Farmer Focus: Are we in for an early harvest?
© Emily Fleur Crops have responded well to a beautiful spell of weather in south Devon over the past few weeks and are looking full of potential.
They certainly seem to be a week or so ahead of last year, with the wheat flag leaf out about 10 May. This indicates one of two things.
About the author
We’re either in for an early harvest or there’s an outside chance of a week of extra yield building, which could contribute to around 1t/ha of extra yield – that’s if you go by the 0.15t/ha a day of extra yield when extending the grain-filling period.
See also: Bold agri-environment choice takes land out of production
Certainly, a glass half full view, but winter crops do look full of potential providing we get the sunshine hours in June. So, as always, we live in hope.
Tissue samples have been taken in the winter wheat, targeting the top three leaves and the overall spring barley canopy to maximise grain fill and yield going into June.
As the seasons move on, we feel the T3 timing is more important for us than the T0 timing. Since we dropped the T0 we are happy to invest at the ear wash stage, both from a fungicide and micronutrient point of view.
Spring barleys have tillered well, looking thicker and fuller where we disced the top few inches before drilling. This is confirmation that our soils in the spring need some movement before drilling to achieve a successful establishment.
Crops grew away very lush and look to be short of manganese, so it will be interesting to see what the tissue test results say.
Brix readings are hovering around 10 for the wheat and 13 for the spring barley. I’m still a little unsure what this really means for the health of our crops and outright disease tolerance and how to increase this to the desired >15.
A combination of sap, tissue and brix testing I think is in order, but time seems to fly by without me knuckling down and combining all three. Hopefully, next season I’ll achieve it.Â
