If you had offered me 7t/ha wheat yield in March I would have bitten your hand off.

At present we are running at just over 8.5t/ha and very pleased with the yield, considering the season.

The Extase has averaged 8.7t/ha and 78kg/hl. I just hope it has good protein. We should finish the Palladium today, and at present we are in some very patchy crops with a heavy sprinkling of thistles.

This is yielding just under 6t/ha in places, but this is still a better margin than replacing with a spring crop.

Where it is good it is very good, and where it is bad it is horrific, but that is life.

See also: Harvest 24: 5 top-yielding winter OSR varieties

About the author

Robin Aird

Arable Farmer Focus writer Robin Aird manages 1500ha on the north Wiltshire and Gloucestershire border, with a further 160ha on a contract farming agreement. Soils vary from gravel to clay with the majority silty clay loams. The diverse estate has Residential, commercial and events enterprises. He is Basis qualified and advises on other farming businesses.

Read more articles by Robin Aird

Our spring wheat is still two weeks away and, again, I’m hoping this will be an average crop from a very late planting window.

The maize is growing strongly, with the majority over 7ft tall, and cobs are developing quickly.

The weed control this year has been dreadful and I put that down to various issues: cloddy seed-beds, poor chemical choice and too much nutrition. This is all my fault and, again, a good learning experience.

The knock-on effect will be a late wheat planting, and on this soil anything after 10 October is a risk.

We will be planning to start around 20 October so potentially we may not have winter wheat next year. But the other option, of a sea of blackgrass, is not viable.

Having planted on the frost in January last year, we have seen that it can produce a good crop if done properly.

The Sustainable Farming Incentive winter bird food planted after the rye harvest has grown rapidly and is flowering well.

This should produce some great food over the winter and condition the ground – so a win-win for everyone.

Once the spring wheat is harvested, we will plant the winter cover crop that sits in front of the maize. This does a good job of conditioning the soil and holding nutrients. 

It feels very strange having such a long-drawn-out harvest that starts with rye in June and ends with maize in September.

The advantage is that everyone has lots of breaks, and I am off on a hockey tour in August – which would have been unheard of with the old rotation, as historically we had nearly 40 days of combining to fit in.