Content originally published in the Farmers Guardian
Combines were busy starting on winter barley last weekend, making the most of the good weather. There won’t be any records broken, but yields look better than we might have expected, given the very dry spring.
Most whole-crop winter wheat and spring barley will also have come off by the time this article is printed, whilst wheat grown for the combine looks good. We use varieties that have good resistance to Septoria; despite having had around 200mm of rain since the end of May they are holding on to a lot of green leaf.
Yellow rust was quite prevalent this year in some varieties. We did control it but we will need to consider resistance scores when choosing wheats for the coming season. Yellow rust is not usually a problem in the north west, but history suggests when varieties break down the situation never improves.
Both Graham and Extase remain good options despite having a bit of age, and Mindful, a high-yielding Group 4 type wheat with good disease resistance, is well worth a try.
Spring barley is full of greens. Tiller production was hit by the dry spring but, once it rained, crops bounced back. Although they are much thicker, we have ended up with two crops in terms of maturity. Anything destined for the combine will need desiccating.
Most farmers on multi-cut systems had taken a third cut of grass by last weekend. There was plenty of grass as there was at second cut, and they are back on track with their target of five cuts.
People choosing multi-species winter cover crops under SFI have been sowing these into lightly cultivated land over the past week or so. There’s plenty of moisture in the seedbed so the plants should be showing in a week to 10 days.
Anyone needing to use the SFI herbal leys option to establish or rejuvenate existing leys needs to preferably direct drill these by the end of August to give plants time to get going.
I have seen mixtures sown into existing silage fields after first cut and the results were clear to see by second cut. This will certainly help thicken the sward and extend its life. Worth considering for the future perhaps?
We have some pretty good-looking maize this season. Crops sown under film are well ahead of normal; they are tasselled and showing silks. I have been recommending MZ28, a slow-release foliar nitrogen, on these and more recently on unprotected crops, particularly those on lighter land and others that might not have received enough slurry. This will help push them on over the next couple of months.
Simon Nelson advises farmers on a wide range of arable and forage crops across Cumbria and into south-west Scotland.