With fairly consistent showers throughout May and early June, we’ve certainly had enough moisture to maintain yield potential in our area of Devon.

And to top it off, the sun is out, just in time to fill these wheat ears with what could be a decent yield ahead of us.

Crops are shorter and biomass is down, but ear size and grain set looks promising. So now we wait.

See also: How Arable Insights farmers are using cover crops in rotation

About the author

Richard Harris

Richard Harris manages his family farm in partnership with his father in south Devon. The farm grows wheat, barley, linseed, grass and cover crops, with a small pick-your-own pumpkin patch.

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The linseed is away and starting to flower. Looks like another good year ahead for it at this stage – not quite as good as the last, but plenty good enough.

Just a few fumitory plants which have come through the herbicides and will, no doubt, be above the canopy soon.

The pumpkins have been in a few weeks and are up in rows now. Along with, of course, a decent population of weeds to contend with.

So the tractor and manual hoes will be out in force soon to keep them at bay.

The lack of safe chemical herbicides on pumpkins certainly makes me appreciate the ones we have in the arable crops, as acres of manual hoeing/hand weeding soon gets boring.

It’ll soon be time to order up our catch and cover crop seed for the summer.

We were pleased with our first stab at summer cover crops between wheat crops last year, so we’ll be doing the same again, using linseed and mustards.

These are quick growing with a low carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, not locking up too much of the available nutrients.

We’ve been using a six-way cover crop for a few years, and we’ll be repeating that, with an eye on sheep grazing in the new year before our spring linseed.

Away from the field, we’ve recently had a few projects on the go, one being a secure dog walking field on a small piece of land my wife and I bought last year, which has been going well and had a cracking dry, sunny spring to open on.

The other is a farmhouse renovation which has opened up some great features we can incorporate into the new design before the holiday lets begin next year.