Attention is focused on pre-emergence herbicide programmes for winter cereal with plenty of grassweed to control this autumn.

Allowing grassweed and volunteer cereals to chit so that they can be controlled is vital, and this can often mean delaying drilling until this happens.

Meanwhile, oilseed rape establishment is challenging due to pressure from cabbage stem flea beetles and slugs.

East

Marion Self

AICC/Prime Agriculture (Suffolk)

Warm and moist conditions have allowed volunteer crops and grassweeds to grow, and this chit will continue for some time yet, rewarding the brave who adjust drilling date according to a field’s grassweed history.

It is also important to manage the drilling campaign so that the sprayer can keep up, allowing pre-emergence herbicide applications to be made close to drilling (ideally within 48 hours) – i.e. before weeds emerge.

On dirty sites, some herbicide mixes are heavy, so to protect the crop it is important to cover the seed well and avoid sprays ahead of heavy rains.

Indeed, the spend on pre-emergence herbicides varies enormously depending on grassweed risk.

Where heavy programmes are being used across large areas to allow frequent winter cereal crops, then I would suggest the rotation needs attention.

Slug pressure is much higher than in recent years, so monitor stubbles prior to drilling to assess the risk.

Damage this season may occur across a variety of situations, not just those with a perceived high risk – for example, trashy or cloddy seed-beds or after rapeseed. 

The Rothamsted Aphid Bulletin indicates similar or slightly higher cereal aphid numbers compared with the “normal” amount for this time of year.

This information, alongside careful monitoring of emerged cereal crops, should be used to form field-by-field barley yellow dwarf virus spray strategies.

Insecticide treatments can be applied with micronutrients or herbicide top-ups. Consider using the T-sum tools available to help guide the best timing of these. 

Oilseed rape crops fall into two main groups. Those that were drilled early, have established well and are growing rapidly, while later drilled crops have suffered more from cabbage stem flea beetle (CSFB) and slug attacks.

The more successful, later drilled crops are just about big enough to be deemed viable. Their survival will depend on CSFB larval numbers, rapeseed winter stem weevil and October weather.

Basically, there is hope encouraging carefully chosen autumn applications, but success is not guaranteed.

West

Antony Wade

Hillhampton Technical Services (Hereford/Shropshire)

The “catch it when you can” harvest conditions have continued into autumn drilling conditions for us in the West, although this steady start to drilling should have some benefit, especially with the disease and grassweed levels last season in September-drilled crops recently harvested.

Where some drilling has been snatched, seed-beds have been pretty good and we have managed to get some pre-emergence herbicide applied, which is critical for September-drilled crops if you want to get any control of grassweeds.

Wheat pre-emergence herbicides have been based around flufenacet/diflufenican + aclonifen and barley around flufenacet/pendimethalin + prosulfocarb or picolinafen depending on weed pressure.

Oilseed rape establishment has been an ongoing traumatic affair despite plenty of moisture in seed-beds.

Crops that were drilled in the last week of August emerged into warm weather conducive to flea beetle migration, so these have been hammered, with some fields re-drilled, and others just about holding on.

Crops drilled either side of the last week of August have faired better, but crops that I am confident enough to start controlling volunteers and broad-leaved weeds are in the minority.

I do wonder if the increasing high risk in growing oilseed rape is going to make growers consider Sustainable Farming Incentive subsidised options or other short-term let options, such as tenderstem broccoli production, which seems to have overtaken anaerobic digester forage maize in the rental cheque league table in our county.

The scrutiny on the River Wye has meant that many growers in the catchment area received Environment Agency (EA) warning letters for lack of winter ground cover last autumn.

Fortunately for my clients, from my crop inspection reports and photos around the time of the satellite images taken, we could provide evidence of planting and ground cover at that time.

While I understand the reasoning and it has probably had the desired affect, with growers being more proactive in planting cover crops to fields destined for spring cropping, what was shocking was the quality of the evidence provided by the EA that it made it difficult to even to identify the fields.

North

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 sat down to write 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 have 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 crop 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 oilseed rape establishment has been the most challenging we had seen, with dry conditions and high CSFB pressure. Well, I would 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 received. The perfect storm – so to speak.

We have worked very hard to keep these crops going and get them through the challenging conditions. I feel, for the most part, this has been successful.

However, they still require careful monitoring and will need plenty of looking after all winter. Pigeon shooters – this is your time to shine.

South

Tod Hunnisett

AICC (Sussex)

First Crop Watch of the new season. Drilling started on 24 September.

I suppose that is a fortnight’s delay from the 10 September we used to start with years ago, on neonic-treated seed and when isoproturon and cyanazine were available. I expect they would both work a treat now.

I think the only thing that would actually delay drilling these days would be two weeks of solid rain for the second half of September followed by six weeks of good weather.

Or the ability to drill 800ha in one day. We can but dream.

The weather conditions we’ve had have provided an excellent opportunity to get a chit of weeds for pre-drilling glyphosate.

If there’s only the chance to do it once, do it as close to drilling as feasible.

The temptation to overlook it should be avoided – you can’t “cultivate out” grassweeds easily – what tends to happen is half of them just get buried and reappear as transplanted weeds in the growing crop.

I always liken it to respraying a tractor without washing it first – it changes colour but very quickly the paint falls off.

Conditions at the moment are also ideal for pre-emergence sprays to work. They all tend to work better pre-emergence (of the weed) than post emergence if the conditions are right.

In very high-risk situations, there is some sense in the strategy that if you can’t spray it in the correct conditions then don’t drill it.

Oilseed rape crops range from two leaves to boot-washing. The rain came in time for it to grow away from top-grazing damage from slugs and flea beetle, so we’ll have to wait and see what level of stem larval damage there is.

One of my farmers was worried it was getting a bit proud, but that doesn’t worry me. Generally speaking, if you have a lot of growth above the ground, there will be an equivalent amount of roots below.

I’d rather have a crop with 30cm roots coming out of the winter than 5cm.