Farmer Focus: Topping legume fallow to stamp out blackgrass
Mark Stubbs © Phil Weedon For the past eight weeks I’ve been doing a rain dance every day, and it’s finally paid off.
We got nearly 30mm of rain over the past week. This was a saviour for our spring barley, which was nearly dying off, but now it will hopefully be a decent crop.
The winter wheat has been holding out quite well as their roots got down over a metre into moist soil.
See also: How estate uses niche crops to broaden risk and flexibility
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However, they were desperately in need of their last application of liquid nitrogen, which I had been holding off for the rain to arrive so I didn’t scorch the flag leaf.
Fortunately, I was able to get this applied either side of the May bank holiday so the rain washed it off the leaves and straight into the soil.
It’s time to decide on my T2 spray on the wheats, but because there is so little disease pressure we decided to do a combined T2/T3 spray to capture septoria, yellow and brown rust, and fusarium risks.
The legume fallows have come well, with the beans and clovers in flower.
There doesn’t seem to be any bee activity unfortunately, so because of their absence, it means we will be able to top them to suppress the large amount of blackgrass which has grown before it drops its seeds.
Winter wheat is to be planted next in the rotation, so it’s particularly important we get good control.
One thing I have learned about growing a legume fallow is it is better to sow in February instead of September to help with blackgrass competition and encourage more clover to flower later, which will hopefully entice the bees to arrive.
Among other jobs to do this time of year is to catch up on maintenance jobs on the farm buildings and houses on the estate, from gutter cleaning and repairing, to painting walls, doors and stanchions.
We are also doing maintenance on the last bits of machinery to get them ready for harvest, which will be here within eight weeks’ time.
