Harvest is drawing to a close for Joe Scott, farm manager at Ashby Ledger Farms, Rugby, Warwickshire, with only 44ha of beans and 80ha of maize left to cut.

“We’ve cut 1200ha of wheat and 800ha of rapeseed,” he said. “Quality has been poor and yields are probably down by around 2t/ha on the wheat.

“Quality has also been disappointing, with bushel weights down to 68kg/hl. It’s just the bushel weights letting the Solstice and Gallant milling wheats down.”

Santiago, Duxford, Conqueror and Oakley were also grown, with Oakley performing pretty well.

But thoughts had now turned to the next crop of wheat, with 200ha already drilled.

“We’ve got 100ha to drill this weekend too, but we’ve got some heavy black grass land in Northamptonshire, which we will probably leave until next week,” said Mr Scott.

All of the rapeseed had been in the ground since 10 September, having gone into pretty good seedbeds.

“Considering the year all crops have gone into the ground pretty well so far. I expect there will be some patchy rapeseed where there’s been some compaction but overall it’s not been too bad,” he added.

Mr Scott still had beans and maize left to harvest. “We grow maize for a local dairy farm, which was drilled back in April when we had all that rain. It sat for about six weeks doing nothing and then it took off.

“It’s looking well, considering I didn’t think it was going to do anything. The cobs look good and I just hope the starch yield is.”

The bean harvest got underway last night (18 September), and although Mr Scott hoped to finish this evening, he did not yet know the quality or yield.