Spring barley has been and will continue to be a valuable tool for farmers, the numerous reasons for growing spring barley are well documented which I won’t go into now. However, you’ve got to this point its now important to make it profitable for your business.
Incorporation of spring varieties into rotations can enhance farm business resilience, especially in the face of increased input costs or weed burdens. When selecting the best variety for your farm business, end market, agronomic packages and consistency of performance are the most important factors to consider.
Autumn 2024 was a tough planting year, prolonged rainfall and waterlogged land in many areas led to delayed or even missed drilling. This spring brings the opportunity to sow fallow ground with spring cereals or pulses either as a cash crop or as feed. Or if you have opted for an overwintered cover crop such as SAM2/SW6, following with a spring cereal crop in the rotation can improve soil structure and nutrient retention.
Seen firstly as a good alternative break crop to oilseed rape – which has become harder to establish due to the difficulties in controlling flea beetle – maize is now a valuable forage for their beef finishing enterprise as well as an additional cash crop sold to neighbouring dairy and goat farms.
Autumn 2023 was a difficult one for many, with the only real drilling window way back in September we have seen a deluge of rain since which seems to have no end in sight, with forecasts predicting wet weather into the new year. This has meant only a handful of opportunities to get on the land to cultivate and then sow autumn crops.
As we start to look to what 2024 will bring, it’s a natural instinct to turn to spring cereals for any land that didn’t get planted in the autumn - deliberately or otherwise! However, with shortages of spring cereals it’s now more important than ever to remember that autumn cereals can be sown successfully into the new year. So, here are my top tips for late sowing winter wheat!
Overseeding is a very simple but effective way to rejuvenate old or damaged grass leys without the cost of a complete reseed. Increases in yield and quality can be achieved without ploughing and the time spent out of production can be reduced.
Inclusion of spring cereal crops in a rotation can be economically beneficial, providing either cash crops or valuable home-grown starch and energy feed sources. However, to see a good return on investment, it’s important to achieve maximum potential yields and this requires attention to detail when it comes to a nutrient plan.
Read our latest blog on Wholecrop cereals where it outlines how crops can be harvested and handled at different dry matters to suit different farm needs.
Read the latest advice from the Wynnstay Arable & Forage team on crop nutrition from our Spring Seeds 2021 edition.
As the spring drilling window is so wide, it is important to ensure seed rates are adjusted to allow for earlier or later drilling.
After the challenge of harvest 2020, we go into 2021 hoping for an improved year not only in agriculture but that Covid-19 will slowly dissipate with the distribution of a vaccine. From a purely agricultural point of view, there is already more optimism that the majority of crops planned to be drilled in autumn 2021 have been.
