I can’t exactly say that the dust is flying, but conditions have improved slowly over the past two weeks, allowing field work to commence.

The first job was to get a few early potatoes planted.

The Tillerstar one-pass tiller system has allowed us to work in damper conditions than any destoner, so we could get the soil through and leave it for 24 hours to skin out nicely on top before planting.

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We were grateful for some dry weather to dry them out further. Any blinks of sun were great and soil temperatures are now rising slowly to 6-7C .

Winter wheat and barley crops received 60kg/ha 24N +SO3 on 4 and 5 March.

The barley will receive the same again, as soon as temperatures rise further, whereas wheat will likely not see any more until the end of the month.  

We have a couple of backward wheat fields, but these should provide a good yield if we can get them away now.

On the whole, winter crops have held up well considering the bombardment of rain they’ve received.

Gleam is by far the most advanced wheat and oats are looking a picture.  

One nice surprise of the new ag-leader sprayer GPS is its ability to complete accurate field records and reports on the job – anything that cuts down on paperwork is welcome. 

Other than a field for the AHDB monitor farm trial, Diablo spring barley was all planted on 9 March. It’s currently raining, so time will tell if I’ve done the right thing,

The ground dried well over the weekend so I took the chance that our min-till following cover crop could cope with a couple of days of rain.

As the more experienced generations around here would say, well sown half grown, and every day after 17 March not planted we lose yield.

It is in nicely and on time, and with the long-range forecast nothing special, I took the gamble.

The next job will be applying fleece and plastic to the early potatoes. Another interesting consequence of Covid-19 is the lack of vegetable fleece availability due to mask production, so we’ve had to revert to plastic.

Before it’s dry enough to plant more potatoes I need to get herbicide applications on winter crops all up to date before they become too advanced.