With early yields and sugars being strong, it looks a much better year for beet – Arable Farming – Darryl Shailes
Last weekend saw a change in how the garden looked ...
We leave areas to grow wild and it is interesting to see the different species that come and go over the season.
We have a nice population of meadow-sweet which favours our low-lying wet garden. If you crush the flowers, it smells a bit like Germolene, but was also used to flavour mead in the past, or so I’ve read. I’m not sure I’d fancy the taste though.
Other species abound like ragged robin, which attracts butterflies and dragonflies, and a strange plant called a water figwort that is pollinated by wasps.
Once a year it is mowed down. We hired a rough-cut mower, an Efco Tuareg, which is an amazing bit of kit. Then it’s raked and burned to keep it low in nutrients to encourage a diverse species mix for the wildlife.
September is one my favourite months. The growing season is coming to a close in potatoes and beet and the harvest beginning, so maybe it’s a good time to reflect on the season before we start thinking about the next one.
Last year in beet it was all about poor weed control, virus and then cercospora causing huge yield losses in many fields. It’s good to see the science behind the various British Beet Research Organisation (BBRO) models has been borne out. Aphid migration was much later and the numbers much lower, with virus levels in fields generally very low with just a few primary infections dotted around. Many fields only had one treatment for aphids. Hopefully we will have another hard winter.
Warning system
Cercospora, while present in many fields at low levels, has not reached the epidemic levels of last year, which again is borne out in the BBRO cercospora warning system which hasn’t triggered any very high-risk periods. It’s just not been hot or wet enough.
Weed control was relatively easy, despite our worries about the loss of desmedipham. The residual component of herbicide treatments worked well and contacts didn’t let us down. Unlike the previous year, when many fields were smothered with fat hen, which proved very difficult to control, fields are generally much cleaner this year. With early yields and sugars being strong, it looks a much better year for beet.
Potatoes have, conversely, suffered more from the weather. Tuber initiation has been all over the place, with some crops having too many, and some too few tubers, so size distribution at harvest will be uneven in many fields. We think this is due to a very wet May, with many crорs sitting under the ground too long in wet, cold soils. Very early plantings emerging in early May and later plantings have generally fared better.
Canopies are big and may be quite a challenge to manage where there isn’t a flail used, especially if the weather is dull and cool when applying the available haulm desiccants.
Blight is an ongoing issue in many fields and, as we discussed last time, the new strains – including EU 36_A2 which is dominating populations, certainly in the East – are challenging foes to manage.
So far though, I’ve seen no tuber blight, although I wish I could say the same for blackleg. Managing the lifting of fields with a significant level of blackleg will take some thought and the skins on anything to be stored will need to be very well set.
At least the recent rains will help with lifting, as some growers were considering getting irrigators out again to help.
Once again we’ve had a season dominated by the weather, as they have been ever since humans became farmers and not hunter gatherers.
No wonder we’re always talking about it, however I still think I’ll always struggle to explain to a layperson that ‘it never rains in a dry time’.
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