Despite all the rain, we are still in a water deficit – Arable Farming – Darryl Shailes
There is a saying 'be careful what you wish for' and last time I wrote I was saying the Waveney Valley was very dry and we needed more rain ...
Since then, we’ve had the wettest March for 40 years or more depending on who you listen to, and potato plantings and sugar beet drilling are well behind where they would normally be for the middle of April.
Even with all the rain we’ve had, the garden didn’t flood at Easter and I heard on Radio Norfolk a spokesperson from Anglia Water saying that there is still potential for a hosepipe ban this coming summer. Apparently we are still in a deficit and groundwater levels are low.
At least we’ve now managed to cut all the grass while watching the cock pheasants squaring up to each other.
The next big event will be the arrival of the cuckoo, so I can get Dad over again, this time with his hearing aid working. I checked the Cuckoo Tracking Project on the British Trust for Ornithology website and the earliest birds are currently in Spain and the south of France.
Apart from delaying plantings, the few crops that have been drilled have seen some free-living nematode damage. Free-living nematodes are one of the biggest threats to agriculture worldwide and in the UK beet and potatoes can both be affected.
Damage
The testing we did last autumn showed that the levels in the topsoil were very low and I was very wary of making too many assumptions as we had had such a long dry spell. This has changed now after a month of wet weather, and they have migrated up the soil profile and affected the crops planted in sandy soils. Once infected, there is nothing we can do apart from foliar feed the affected crops as their root systems will be damaged.
With limited treatments available to us, a more integrated approach is needed. Mustard biofumigant cover crops are one of the few ways we can affect the population in the soil, but they need to be managed correctly or they can increase the problem.
The use of cover crops is becoming increasingly common in sugar beet and potato rotations for the soil benefits they undoubtedly bring and for benefits to pest management.
One of the best uses of a cover crop is barley in sugar beet to camouflage the beet from aphids and it can have a big influence on how early they invade the crop and hence infect the crop with virus. I have seen it for myself now on several occasions.
The increase in wireworm in potatoes can be affected by cover crops, and we are part of a project looking at that in trials. The trials will be discussed at out Silt Potato Demo Trials site being run in conjunction with A.H. Worth Farms at Holbeach and Simon Faulkner of SDF Agriculture.
The open day is on Thursday, July 13, and we will look at a range of topics that are issues, not only for potato growers on Lincolnshire silts, but across a much wider range of soil types.
Topics we plan to discuss will include wireworm, how to manage it and what cover crops to use; PCN resistance and tolerance across a range of new varieties; and what effect post-emergence herbicides have on the same varieties.
We will also be looking at some nutritional aspects of growing potatoes and what alternative strategies are available among other things. Hopefully we will see some of you there.
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