Just before Christmas, I was having a Farm Office meeting in the Hinton Arms with a couple of clients (as one does just before Christmas). An observation was made that although it had been wet and miserable since October, the springs hadn’t risen, the old gravel pit was still empty and the winter bournes (or lavants as they’re called in Sussex) were not yet running. So not that much rain could have fallen.

Here we are now, just over a month later, and boy has that changed. The River Lavant can barely get under the bridges and springs have sprung up where they haven’t been seen for years. Most fields are so wet it’s impossible to walk over them, let alone think about rectifying any problems we might find. Such is life.

We have had a couple of cold snaps down here that have gone some way to relieving the massive disease pressure caused by the very mild winter. Mildew is rife, rust is easy to find and the potential for septoria is huge. We’ll need a bit more cold, dry weather yet before we can drop our guard regarding first fungicide applications – let’s see what the second half of February brings.

Because of the wet, late summer, very little of the cereals I look after were drilled before the end of September. Having all been treated with an insecticide seed treatment, I’m struggling to find any aphids in those crops, despite the mild autumn. Certainly this time last year we were seeing barley yellow dwarf virus symptoms in some crops. There are reports though of cabbage stem flea beetle larvae in rape crops – just what we don’t need when there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance of being able to do anything about it.