Harvest 2024 has already gone down in the chronicle of farming as ‘an absolute stinker’! Currently not much positive can be said about it. Taking the crops in turn.

Oilseed Rape:

Looks OK, but increasingly riddled with cabbage stem flea beetle larvae. Pigeons making a start on the thinner parts of the field.

2nd winter wheat:

Drilled into perfect condition. Pre-emergence weed control applied within 3 days. A couple of days later a deluge of rain (60mm) washed the herbicide down to the germinating wheat which has wholly struggled ever since. The crop is thin, patchy, struggling to grow and had a yield potential of barely 5t/ha.

Winter barley:

Mauled in after that 60mm of rain. No opportunity to spray blackgrass herbicides (fortunately given the above experience) but the crop is now riddled with blackgrass. Further heavy rain followed drilling of the crop and the headlands of the field look awful. The only hope for this crop is the hoe I have on order and the hope that conditions will allow me to use the hoe!

1st wheat after beans:

‘Drilled’ after 150mm in 3 weeks. I did well to take the opportunity to get the field drilled. It went well considering the conditions and the fact the I had recently had the field drained, followed by mole draining was the deciding factor in the ability to drill the field. The crop is not germinating.

Winter Oats:

Seed still in the bag. Might be able to drill on a heavy frost (goodness knows when that will happen; it is very mild and I have yet to resort to turning the central heating on).

No other news. Some of you might recall my little experiment with trying to grow a second crop of ‘summer barley’ after an early harvested winter barley. This failed. The crop looked OK but was totally battered to the earth by storm Babet and will not now see a combine.