Crop Watch East & West – Farmers Weekly
A unique insight into agronomy issues across the country ...
They say every cloud has a silver lining. Unfortunately, the clouds only seem to deliver rain. However, in this area I think we’ve got away lighter than other places. I flew into Gatwick at the start of the month, and Kent looks much wetter than it was locally when I got home to Hertfordshire.
I then drove to Lincolnshire, which was a similar story. A fair amount of cereals have been drilled in the area, with varied success of establishment. Earlier drilled wheats and barleys look well. But on heavier land, where drilling was delayed for blackgrass, establishment hasn’t been as good, especially on headlands where compaction issues are coming to light.
Even fields that haven’t been rolled or had a pre-emergence herbicide applied are showing damage. This is down to overworking during cultivation, which has destructured the soil, as well as over trafficking on turning headlands, causing compaction. This is now holding water in the profile where the seed is sitting, and allowing it to rot away.
Slugs are also an issue, especially in cereals following oilseed rape. Ferric phosphate slug pellets have been applied where traps contained slugs, and usually with good effect from just one dose. However, slug populations in some fields are high. Persistent doses of more than one pellet have been needed in these situations.
In a lot of places, it is too wet to even drive a quad bike across the land, so the ability to get on with a sprayer to apply post-emergence residual herbicides or barley yellow dwarf virus insecticides is limited. With the weather mild and aphids present, there is still the need to control them. However, the physical practicality of doing this is another story.
With growers now looking for any opportunity to apply these pesticides, thought must be given to the environmental effect some applications will invariably have. On top of this, chemistry applied to water-stressed crops will only increase the pressure they are under.
With just over 25cm of recorded rain since my last entry, the main thrust of this report is to say that there is nothing to report. I am not aware of a single field having been drilled since I last contributed, and very few fields have had any barley yellow dwarf virus material or post-emergence herbicide applied.
I keep hearing how there is a lot of slug damage out there at present, but I have to say I am seeing very little in the way of slug activity. There are missing patches in crops, but these are purely down to waterlogging, not slug activity.
Where blackgrass is an issue in oilseed rape, we are seeing the blackgrass growing well, with the window for products such as Centurion Max (clethodim) now missed. There is going to be a very heavy reliance on propyzamide to work well in order for us to get any level of control.
Residual herbicides
Pre-emergence applications in cereal crops appear to be working well despite the challenging weather. Certainly, the lack of soil moisture cannot be blamed for poor performance of residuals.
If anything, the polar opposite will be the case this autumn. With a lot of wheat left to be planted, I would urge growers to try to get the crop in the ground, even if the timing and the conditions are suboptimal.
The reason for this advice is that there is just not going to be enough spring cereal seed available to allow people to substitute planned winter cereal plantings with spring ones. In short, 2023 just keeps on giving.
I, for one, will be heartily glad to see the back of this extremely challenging year. I would like to wish anyone with winter crops still to be planted the very best of luck. It is going to be needed, along with a prolonged and, therefore, unseasonable dry spell.
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