Crop Watch (20 May) – Farmers Weekly

Dry weather continues to dominate, with some areas receiving as little as 10mm of rain since the end of March.

Most areas will, however, have had a bit more than this, but really only in two main rainfall events. This has led to relatively low disease pressure.

Despite the dry conditions, I have only seen a couple of crops manifesting clear signs of drought stress. Most crops are looking surprisingly good. The winter barley crop is looking very promising and recent rain will help ensure that grain fill will happen normally.

Many crops are already flowering, significantly earlier than most years. The winter wheat crop is also much earlier than normal, with many crops reaching GS39 a week to 10 days earlier than usual. Why are these crops so much earlier than usual? I believe it is a combination of factors. Many crops have received a little less nitrogen than usual and this will usually cause crops to develop a little more quickly. We have also come through a winter with very little frost and cold weather, which means soil temperatures have never fallen low enough to stop crop growth and development and have then warmed more rapidly in the spring as the starting point was at a higher temperature than usual.

Disease levels

Septoria continues to bubble away in the bottom of many crops, with drilling date and crop density having more of an effect on disease levels than varietal resistance. With crop values for 2022 harvest being where they are, there are very few growers prepared to take a chance on missing out a T2 or using lower doses, particularly as this application can be as much about what the next three weeks have in store for us as what the past three weeks have given us.

The winter oilseed rape crop continues to look very promising, but I have learned over the years that you quite simply cannot judge a rapeseed crop by the way it looks. We will have to wait until the combines start to roll to know if the promise will be fulfilled.

Supply chain issues have dominated like never before this year, with many agrochemical manufacturers failing to get product where it was needed to be in time for use.

“Just in time” production runs and delivery schedules are fine when everything else in the supply chain is working well, but when haulage is difficult, drivers are at a premium and there is a war in Europe, these finely tuned schedules have tended to fall apart. I hope this will be looked at by manufacturers and measures put in place to deliver a smoother 2023.

Spring cereals are now starting to race through their growth stages. The lack of rain has held back the chit of broad-leaved weeds that are usually controlled around the T1 fungicide timing. Recent showers have now, in most places, moistened the top few inches of soil enough to promote a flush.

When taking these weeds out, attention will need to be paid to the crop growth stage and the product label to ensure that individual product cut-off timings are not exceeded. Here in the East, although we have had the odd shower, the majority have had only a token amount, and plants in many cases are still stressed from drought. Herbicides are not as effective on drought-stressed weeds, and can add to the pressure on already stressed crops. Ideally manage herbicide applications to use higher water rates, and ideally lone application, rather than in big tank mixes for both efficacy and crop safety.

Prolonged crop emergence in some conventional sugar beet crops due to dry seed beds has made for interesting weed control this season, with some fields having to be split so that weed control on forward parts is done separately to those still emerging, both to make sure weeds don’t get too big on the forward parts, but also to protect the smaller emerging beet from the larger stacks of chemistry needed on the forward weeds.

Conviso Smart sugar beet will now be getting its single application of the Conviso One herbicide, which has given fantastic control of weeds in the past two seasons. Thiamethoxam-treated sugar beet will now be coming to the stage where control of aphids from the seed treatment is running out. Regular field inspections are needed to monitor for aphids, and treatment with flonicamid will be necessary should thresholds be reached.