Crop Watch: Soils too warm for propyzamide sprays in OSR – Farmers Weekly

Two of the key topics this week are related to oilseed rape (OSR). Some crops have reached the spray threshold for phoma and fungicides are being applied to manage the disease.

There is also debate on when to apply propyzamide to tackle emerging weeds, although our agronomists agree that soils are still to warm to apply.

I’ve been famous the past few weeks for saying “all I need is two weeks of good weather to get finished up” and somehow the weather gods have played ball.

After some wet weather through the middle of October, which has unfortunately resulted in some lost headlands, the forecast has suddenly improved and given us a reasonable dry spell to finish the last of any drilling and get caught up with spraying.

The last of harvest has been finished in recent weeks with spring beans and maize land now cleared.

The break in the forecast has allowed us to sow wheat into relatively good conditions, especially for the time of year.

Earlier sown cereals are now beginning to tiller and for land not in IPM4, the mild conditions would provide an excellent opportunity to protect against BYDV and load crops with important micro-nutrients ahead of the winter.

The more biomass we can build heading into the winter, the greater the crop potential in the spring.

With harvest delayed by two to three weeks, which in turn pushed the start of drilling back, it is important we encourage these crops along as must as possible.

The big topic up for debate is when to apply propyzamide to oilseed rape crops.

The advice is to wait until ground temperatures have fallen below 10C.

This is primarily to extend the residual activity of the active against grassweeds, such as blackgrass.

While this may be important for some, most crops in the county will not suffer with blackgrass, but will have actively been growing broad-leaved weeds and annual meadow grass.

These will be our main targets and so you may wish to apply your herbicides now, while these are still actively growing, to ensure a good result.

This is also a good time to manage crop growth, as some of them are big, as well as disease management and plant nutrition ahead of the winter months.

I acknowledge that this has been an extremely challenging season right from the off for everyone.

I hope we can all have some time over the coming months to recharge and reflect.

I try to use this time to look at what we can learn from the past season, what went well and what didn’t go so well. Here’s to a good spring.