Crop Watch North – Farmers Weekly
Crop Watch - Farmers Weekly ...
Conor Campbell, Hutchinsons (Northumberland)
It is crazy to think we are into a new cropping year. It doesn’t feel like five minutes ago that I wrote my first entry for Crop Watch and we are back to start it all again. They say “no two years are the same” and they are certainly correct.
We had an incredibly stop-start harvest, with our fair share of wet weather that delayed the start and made cutting a large amount of flat crop very challenging.
Thankfully, a week of good weather allowed many to harvest lodged wheat crops with surprisingly acceptable results. Rapid and soft stem growth during the spring led to large amounts of late lodging. It came as a surprise that, despite the lodging, many were achieving specific weights in the high 70s, which demonstrated just how much grain these weak stems were trying to support in heavy rainfall.
The drilling campaign has been a tough one for many. Northumberland has been split in two with regards to the rainfall pattern, with Alnwick being the dividing line. South of there has seen considerably more rainfall than north. On one Sunday, I had 40mm at home and Berwick only saw 3mm.
Drilling progress varies, with the north of the county being roughly 80% sown up, compared to south of Alnwick, where the figure stands closer to 30%. Despite this, farmers continue to work hard to get crops in the ground. Slugs have started to nibble at wheat after OSR, so this is something to watch out for.
I mentioned last year that OSR establishment has been the most challenging we had seen, with dry conditions and high CSFB pressure. Well, I’d like to retract that accolade and give it to this autumn. Most crops were sown two weeks later than normal, emerging very slowly, right into the main CSFB migration window and during the only warm weather we’ve had. The perfect storm, so to speak.
We have worked very hard to keep these crops going and I feel, for the most part, this has been successful.
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