Crop Watch: Too dry for some spring crops and OSR starts flowering

We’ve had a great spell of weather this past month, and work on farm has progressed very well. Spring crops have been going in the ground at pace and the earlier sown cereals are beginning to emerge.

We’ve had the odd frost, but night-time temperatures appear to be on the rise, so hopefully, that is the last of the cold nights.

Temperatures through the day have been cool with plenty of sunshine – exactly what crops are looking for.

Wheat crops on the whole look well, with the majority of T0s on farm ready to be applied this week.

We have been battling yellow rust on the vast majority due to a combination of later sowing; a mild winter and perfect conditions for the disease, have resulted in some spectacular photos on our WhatsApp group.

The later sown wheats, where T0 was still several weeks away, needed some early tebuconazole to burn the rust out and my suggestion is to incorporate a strobilurin into the T0 here.

Barleys have really started to move through stem extension, with the bulk now at GS31. Some crops received some early PGR and nutrition, which really helps to maintain tillers and promote root development.

T1 is approaching and the focus is on good, early suppression of net blotch, rhynchosporium and mildew.

Oilseed rapes are anywhere from late stem extension to very early flower. The latter are at risk of losing some of the flower buds to late frosts. However, we are early enough that they can compensate for this. I suspect we could have a long, drawn out flowering period.

We will be looking to protect against sclerotinia in the coming weeks and the debate is always around a one or two spray programme.

While we don’t often see lots of the disease, it can be extremely devastating and if flowering is to carry on for 4-5 weeks or more then a second spray should really be considered, especially on high potential crops.

Top up nitrogen, be that urea ammonium nitrate or methylene urea (MU) types could be considered at early flowering to boost seed and oil development. The advantage of the slow release MUs is their crop safety and ability to tank mix with fungicides.