It has been relatively quiet on the farm during July, with staff taking well-earned leave before the onslaught of harvest and the autumn drilling campaign.

It looks as if we are going to experience quite a break between the winter barley and oilseed rape harvests again this year.

In fact, there is a distinct possibility of the OSR harvest clashing with winter wheat. Winter barley was desiccated on Monday 12 July, so we will have started by the time you read this.

About the author

David Fuller

David Fuller manages 3,500ha of medium sandy clays for McGregor Farms based at Coldstream, on both sides of the border. Cropping includes wheat, spring barley, winter barley and oilseed rape, spring beans and vining peas. Potatoes are farmed in collaboration with Greenvale AP.

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See also: 8 tips on early OSR drilling to beat the flea beetle threat

Oilseed rape, on the other hand, has barely changed colour and desiccation looks a bit off yet.

Allowing for the usual three to four weeks of ripening, harvest will be in mid-August at best, or a week to 10 days later than “normal”.

On the plus side, crops look quite well, despite all Mother Nature has thrown at them. Disease levels have increased significantly in cereals in recent weeks.

Ramularia infections are high in both winter and spring barley, and septoria is starting to move up the canopy in winter wheat, even after a relatively robust fungicide spend.

Modern chemistry with its eye-watering price tag does seem to be far less effective at controlling disease once it is in your crop than its predecessors used to be.

As we have seen this season, after a very dry March and April, it only took a wet May to put crops under severe disease pressure by early July.

New-season fertiliser prices have opened at a staggeringly high level, especially nitrogen and phosphate. Will the markets ease? Only time will tell.

Unless they do, I don’t think we can justify any applications of solid phosphate fertiliser. Thankfully, our soil indices are good, which may allow us to take a partial phosphate holiday and use foliar applications instead, if needed.

Nitrogen is a different kettle of fish and we will have to join in the market at some point. Hopefully, there will be enough tanker drivers to deliver our requirement before we need it.