Farmer Focus: Trialling a catch crop after winter wheat
Richard Harris © Emily Fleur The recent weather might have been tricky for combining, but not so much for cover and catch crop establishment.
The moisture and warmth created a wonderful seed-bed for our main cover crops drilled on 2 August after winter barley. These are now starting to fly.
Soil is friable underneath, so I’m expecting a very full crop going into the winter.
See also: How to introduce the SFI no-till action into cropping
Something we are trying for the first time is a catch crop of mustard and buckwheat, drilled on 20 August after winter wheat, before winter barley.
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It’s a slot I’ve so far not seen the value in, but after last year’s winter barley establishment, I’m sure we moved too much soil with the discs, even if it was only 2in and the crop suffered over the winter.
I’ve always found drilling on the green to create a friable seed-bed worthwhile, but never thought we had the time to get value in the autumn. This year will be the test of that.
The seed cost us £17/ha and the drilling has flushed some wheat volunteers, which is all part of the process. The mustard and buckwheat have two-true leaves and are starting to move.
Hopefully, they’ll be knee high by early to mid-October and give us a clean friable entry. I’ll keep you posted. Â
Speaking of the wheat, it came off about 16% with a yield of 8.5-9t/ha, so reasonable for the year, but I thought it might have done a little more.
Straw yield was good, with around 4.5t/ha of dry round bales – about as valuable as the grain itself in our area at the moment.
With the spring purchase of our digger, we’ve been examining our drainage and ditch issues.
We have found old, blocked clay pipe and stone drains we didn’t know existed, and have tidied up some overdue silty ditches. Certainly, a value purchase we should of made years ago.
The linseed has been sprayed off and looks as good as it ever has. Let’s hope it doesn’t flatter to deceive, like a lot of crops have done this year.
