Flea beetle already on the attack

WELL, how was it for you? The harvest, I mean.

No doubt, some of you will still be hard at it, due to the stop-start weather we have had. Yield reports of winter barley have been variable this year and, although some are down, other crops on light land appear to have done better than average.

In the variety trials results at High Mowthorpe, the new malting variety Pearl and the new six-row varieties Angela and Siberia performed very well, though old favourite Halcyon was well and truly at the bottom of the list, largely due to lodging problems.

Winter OSR has fared particularly badly this year, which is more than likely due to the lack of sunshine this summer. In the trials results for rape, Gemini and Madrigal were well up on the yield lists, though Pronto did rather poorly and ended up bottom.

Wheat harvesting is about half way through, as I write, and hopefully well through by the time you read this. Early crops at Mowthorpe, mostly around the 3.5t/acre and mainly Hereward, were cut early and on the damp side to preserve our Hagbergs. Elsewhere, reports are variable, with yields down on last year.

Our first new rape crop has emerged and is already under attack from flea beetle - watch yours carefully.

This week sees another episode on the topic of canopy management in wheat, where we initially discussed the importance of achieving a Green Area Index (GAI) of six to intercept incoming radiation most efficiently. This was followed by a guide to the initial steps for attaining this canopy size, which starts with your seed rates in the autumn.

Although perhaps a little premature as this stage, it is important to note that having your early drilled, low-seed-rate crop, you cannot proceed to treat it the same as all the other wheat crops on the farm.

If you drill at the end of August/beginning of September, you will be growing an entirely different crop, and as such it needs special management. Much of that will be in the spring, with your nitrogen management, ideally kicking off with a Soil Mineral Nitrogen Test and perhaps use of a more robust growth regulator programme. However, we shall go into the subject again in more detail in spring. For the time being, it is important to be thinking of what you have to do after the crop emerges.

Being longer in the ground before winter allows weeds to get away before optimal timings for residual herbicides.

Depending on the field and soil type, it may well be necessary to go in a bit earlier, to knock out some of the weeds before they become too big. Whether or not this is necessary, you will almost certainly need to apply more than one dose of a synthetic pyrethroid to protect against BYDV infection in very early drilled crops. For this purpose, cypermethrin will do the job, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Aphids will be flying into the crop from emergence until temperatures cool down, which could easily be over two months, so to reduce virus spread, at least two, if not three, insecticides are advisable.

If you are on heavier soils, it is worth thinking about getting a Soil Mineral Nitrogen Test done in the autumn - although for lighter land it is best to wait until spring, when most of the leaching is over. This is important for those crops where you can easily give them too much and be faced with badly-lodged crops come harvest time. After all, how can you know what it will need unless you know what is in the soil to begin with? To find out more, ask your crop consultant, or you can call us on either of the numbers at the top of this column.