The key aim at Lamport has been to enable a return to profitable and high-yielding September-sown first wheats within the rotation, which were becoming untenable due to a combination of difficult silty clay loam soils and a high background blackgrass population that exceeded 2000 plants/sq m.
Niall Atkinson, consultant and trials co-ordinator at Lamport AgX, says: “If you didn't get crops in by the second week of October you risked not getting them in at all. But going earlier was asking for trouble with blackgrass.
“Lamport AgX is all about solving this conundrum. We’ve learnt how to do that, using sequences of autumn cover crops and spring break crops such as oats, beans or barley to reduce blackgrass pressure, backed up by appropriate herbicides, whilst minimising soil movement when establishing cash crops and improving soil health to help create a favourable environment for wheat.”
The Lamport concept has proved itself over several very different seasons, reliably producing high-yielding first wheats sown in September. In 2023 yields averaged just under 10.5t/ha following a range of different crops with almost no blackgrass; some plots exceeding 12t/ha.