Winter wheat is still about a week away at Ouse Bank Farm, Great Barford, Bedfordshire, and is looking very green, says Stephen Bumstead.

“I think it needs to be sprayed off – we’ve got so many green tillers in the tramlines – the spring barley is the same.”

A neighbour in Stotfold had made a start on cutting Cordiale winter wheat today (28 July), and patches of wheat had been started – and stopped again – up the A1 towards Peterborough, he added.

But there wasn’t much wheat under way in the area.

Spring wheat, sown after sugar beet, looked awful. “It germinated in June when we got the rain; it’s all over the place.”

And sugar beet was similarly variable within individual fields. “Some is forming a nice shaped root and others are still at two-leaf stage. It’s just bonkers.”