January has been a month for getting back into the swing of things after an enjoyable festive period. The main feature of the month has been our cover crops and our woolly friends who’ve joined us in managing them this year.
Cover Crops
Our cover crops are now starting to draw to a close. We’ve finished spraying off all of our typical Radish mix cover crops and the hard frosts have put the final nail in the coffin. This year we’ve also been running a grazing trial to look at what impact livestock makes on our current system. Our next diary entry features the findings of our grazing trial in more detail but, in a nutshell, we’ve had good success so far and the sheep have enjoyed themselves too!
Tucking into an Oat and volunteer OSR cover crop - drilled with grazing in mind
Wheat
During January we have seen noticeable growth in our Wheat crops, making the cold weather closing the month very welcome. Our Agronomist David Morris suggests the plants look like they are heading into April not February!
Overall the Wheat crop is looking very clean, with only our late September sown Costello drilled at 320s/m2 displaying low levels of mildew. I found this surprising, considering Costello scores 8 on the recommended list for resistance but, with our mild Autumn and Winter so far, I’m not sure it has ever really stopped growing. That being said, I’m not overly concerned about it. Costello remains our main variety and the rest of the crop around the farm is showing no symptoms.
Wheat across the farm is looking well and Costello remains our favoured variety - Taken 11th Jan
OSR
We started the year with a stock of strong OSR plants which was just as well, given that we weren’t the only ones admiring the crop. The pigeon mob returned briefly but, considering we had achieved good ground cover from to corner to corner, I wasn’t too worried. Nevertheless, they were swiftly evicted.
At the start of January, I applied Fox to a few of our fields to control Charlock. Done ahead of a frost, it has done its job, reinforcing the effect of the late November Astrokerb. The result is a very tidy looking crop as we head into February.
A couple of hard frosts in late January reinforced the Fox's effect
Dry January
No this isn’t a ‘new year new me’ mantra – our January really has just been that dry! This month we’ve received 20mm total rainfall which fell well short of our 53mm 20-year average. With our soils still in deficit, we hope to see the books balanced ahead of spring, although time is fast running out!
The dry conditions meant the sprayer was particularly light footed when spraying off the cover crops
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