Farmer Focus: Could it be a good year for specific weights?
© Emily Fleur Sun sun, glorious sun! What a difference a few weeks make, not only catching up with jobs, but to the general mood and motivation of getting it all done.
This sun must also be doing the power of good to our winter barley, which is in its full grain-filling period. It could be a good year for specific weights on these earlier harvesting crops.
Not much to pick between our Feeris and Sensation.
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There is slightly more disease pressure in the Sensation, but they both look adequately good now, other than some brome appearing on the headlands, which I’m sure will need some herbicide attention in the years to come.
Certainly, a weak link in the no-till system.
With the wheat coming into ear and soon to be flowering, we took some leaf samples a week ago before the traditional ear-wash timing. This showed a low level of sulphur, potash, zinc and boron.
I think we’ll target the sulphur, potash and boron at this stage and forget about the zinc.
But all three elements will be important for flowering and grain fill over the next month so will be worth correcting, especially if the sun stays out.
Disease-wise, I’m on the fence about the risk on the ear. The crop looks so good it would be frustrating to get caught this late in the day for the cost of £4/acre to go in with the nutrients, so I think we’ll highly likely do it.
The linseed is coming away nicely, a little held back by the pre-emergence herbicide, which seems to have knocked back on the overlaps along with my area of clover companion.
Maybe it’s not safe after all. It certainly, doesn’t like being drilled 20mm deep. Perhaps I’ll try it without the pre-emergence next season and see what we get.
Pumpkins are in and drilled into reasonable moisture 50mm deep. Ploughing and working down back in April certainly seems to have paid off this year, holding more moisture now.
Soils are so warm the crop should fly away until it runs out of moisture in July and starts to wilt like it did last year. Hopefully we catch some rain in the coming month to offset that.
