Crop Watch: Dry weather prompts early cereal drilling – Farmers Weekly

The extremely dry conditions that continued into August prompted the understandable fear that “when the rain starts, it won’t stop”.

The rain eventually appeared on the forecast a fortnight ago, but our fears were not realised when 30-35mm arrived over a 24-hour period, soaked in and, in fact, improved conditions dramatically.

Oilseed rape went into completely dry soils and for some, stayed there for 3-4 weeks before eventually germinating once we got an initial drop of rain.

These have been a struggle since, as we have been in field several times a week trying to will them on.

I don’t feel the cabbage stem flea beetle numbers have been high, but rather, with so few plants emerged, it hasn’t taken many adults to put the field under pressure (semantics, perhaps).

Even the volunteer cereals have struggled, so there has been an unusual clash of spraying in recent weeks.

Our main focus now is getting these crops to a size where they will handle pigeon grazing and everything the winter may throw at them.

Nitrogen, phosphites and nutrition are going to be key over the next few weeks.

A huge amount of cereals were sown in a short period of time, some before the rain but a lot over the past 7-10 days, which have all hit moisture and emerged in record time.

Early drilling, particularly with moisture and warm soils, will bring challenges that we need to address in the autumn to avoid problems in the spring.

Grassweeds will begin to emerge and we need to bear in mind that residual actives are only effective for so long.

Flufenacet, for example, will cease to be effective on bromes and blackgrass after approximately 20 days.

It would be wise to consider a sequenced approach to residual chemistry where there is a focus on these weeds.

We may look to use long-lasting actives such as aclonifen, or start with our flufenacet-based products and follow that with cinmethylin.

This approach ensures that an adequate loading of active is present throughout the germination windows and is the building block to reducing grassweed pressure in the spring.

I can’t sign off without mentioning BYDV. Early emergence means increased pressure, so remember to monitor aphid numbers and treat accordingly – where you haven’t entered fields in IPM4.