September has remained unusually dry, with the result that heavy land ploughed in late August or early September has become virtually unworkable. Large amounts of diesel and wearing metal could be expended in creating a cloddy seedbed, but waiting for a little rain will allow a perfect seedbed to be created. Several farmers locally are taking that approach, whilst others are carrying on and some are even sowing second wheats which ideally should be sown as late as possible - certainly into October.
To date I have drilled all but 12 ha of winter barley, and most of the first wheat, but I'm waiting for some C1 seed for the final 8ha. All spraying is up to date and as IPU has been banned by the EU, I will be trying several different mixes this year. The first is Crystal which contains flufenacet and pendimethalin, this was applied at 2.6 lt/ha on fields which traditionally have a high weed population. The second mix is Defy(Prosulfocarb) + Pendimethalin. Very little will germinate until we get some rain unfortunately.
Canola, which got off to a good start in August is showing some signs of suffering from a lack of moisture too.
The month of August started off very unsettled weatherwise which caused delays in combining and drilling Canola (OSR). At one stage it looked as if a repeat of 2008 was on the cards. However when the rain stopped the west winds and sunshine dried things very quickly and all the grain was cut at 'reasonable moisture - the wettest being 18.5% and the last of the wheat was cut at 15.5% which is most unusual for this locality.
As expected yields have not been record breaking with most crops being around the 'average'. Straw was short and is in great demand as normally 8-10 bales per acre may be expected, whereas this year 4 seems to be average and I have heard of a case where only 1 bale/acre was achieved. One field by the river which had moisture all season, yielded extremely well and consequently gave 9 bales/acre.
All the wheat and barley has been dried and put in store in the hope that the price may lift from it's current dismal level.
Next years Canola crop has been sown and is just emerging.
After one of the wetter Julys on record, August ha started off reasonably well allowing the harvest to proceed in a bit of a stop go fashion between showers. All the winter barley and canola ha been cut and dried, with all the barley straw being baled as it is in short supply this year. A start has been made on the spring barley but the remainder is not quite ready yet. Yields are disappointing but not unexpected given the weather pattern over the growing season this year.
Many farmers have already drilled some or all of their Canola for next year as soil conditions have been good, but I hope to drill some next week (17th).
Wheat has almost all been pre-harvest sprayed with glyphosate so should follow on fairly quickly after that.
On the evening of the 23rd some barley was found at around 17% moisture content. So I went out and cut around 3 ha. The yield seems to be better than expected, but unfortunately the weather has stopped any further combining. Very disappointing as now most of the winter barley is ready to harvest and 5 or 6 good days would see the bulk of it in the store.
Canola has been sprayed off using 'Roundup Max' and should be ready to harvest in 14 - 20 days.
After an extremely dry 6 months where rainfall was less than half of normal, July has been rather wet. Crops which looked as if they were coming to harvest early a few weeks ago have settled down and the last of the pre-harvest glyphosate (Roundup) was applied yesterday, to winter barley. Extremely unseasonal weather on 17th July, did some damage to crops but nothing serious so far.
Canola (OSR) should be sprayed later this week which will make combining around mid August.
Wheat suffered most in the bad weather, but is just looking weatherbeaten rather than lodged.
The combine, grain drier and grain stores are all prepared so it is just a case of having patience and waiting for the crops to be ready!
We have had very little rain since the end of February and crops were suffering, July came in and has been very wet, just when we don't need rain. There has been 88mm rain today coupled with winds gusting over 45 knots, so there are concerns for standing crops.
Due to lightning strikes and power outages, the posted weather may be unreliable although this will be corrected manually.
There was some welcome rain last night, totalling some 12.5mm (1/2"). crops and grass have been under stress for a few weeks, with winter barley in particular racing through the growth stages without putting on a lot of vegetative growth. Spring barley is variable, from tillering to still struggling to emerge, with many bare patches around this area. Wheat is growing very slowly but will probably explode into life if warm weather and more showers follow.
After 7 months of almost continual wet weather, April has turned out to be one of the driest on record with only 7mm so far. Consequently the ground has dried out on top and is now very hard. This has allowed us to get on well with all the planned fertiliser applications, and to apply herbicides which should have gone on last October. IPU (herbicide) has been banned as it can be detected in some water supplies - an indication of the advance of detection rather than pollution - so all the stock of IPU had to be used this spring.
Crops are very backward as although the weather is dry, it is also cold with very few days where the weather has passed 10 deg C.
It would appear that winter is now here with a week when temperatures have barely risen above freezing, mixed with strong winds, sleet and snow. The canola was sprayed with a herbicide (Kerb) one frosty morning when the land was frozen hard enough to support the sprayer. The sprayer was then washed out and anti freeze pumped around the system to prevent frost damage.
The weather is still the main obstacle to land work with soils ploughing up very wet and with poor structure due to the damage caused when harvesting the previous crop.
All the target area of winter barley has been sown, but into seedbeds of variable quality, and 3 to 5 weeks later than ideal. Establishment is slow as soil temperatures are dropping off quickly. Wheat sowings stopped as the weather has broken down completely and there is little prospect of further land work this year.
Well, the harvest which started off badly due to weather continued to get worse. A large acreage was combined at moisture contents greater than 20% with consequent drying costs. The biggest problem however was travelling on the waterlogged fields. The tractor and trailers managed to survive but the combine was stuck on many occasions. Only about 1 acre in total was unrecoverable as it could not be reached by the combine header.
16 days since I last combined, although I did try yesterday for an hour or so and cut some wheat at around 24% until the the rain became too heavy.
The land is still really too wet to plough although I have started on some of the better drained fields.
OSR drilled three weeks ago is still stuck at the cotyledon stage as it has been sitting in water for most of that time.
The wheat harvest is turning into a salvage job now and there are many farmers locally who are much worse off than myself with thousands of acres to cut in some cases. The problem now is traveling on the saturated ground and there are many stories of damage to combines as they are dragged out of wet spots. Some wheat has also started to sprout whilst still in the ear and even spring barley, primarily a variety named Oxbridge, is doing the same.
Normally we would start sowing next years crop around the 15th, but this year harvest is only 70% complete.
Drying problems have been exacerbated by BP LPG who have a new delivery system and deliveries are taking up to a week to arrive - normally I get my tank refilled every 3 days. Anyone out there considering using BP - don't.
Rain has been the major factor in the poor progress in harvest this year. We had 4 dry days in August and every day we were combining some rain fell. September has started off equally poorly and the forecast is more of the same.
Winter barley was finished on the 26th August about a fortnight late with the consequent weathering of the grain. Yields were still excellent but the difficulty was the wet ground which would not support the combine or trailers. Considerable damage to the soil has been done to certain parts of the fields.
Some wheat was combined at the end of August and again yields vary from very good to unbelievable. However the combine has not moved for a week now and the potential for the remainder of the wheat must decrease daily.
About 25 Ha of Oilseed Rape has been drilled into moderate seedbeds, using the newly purchased Sumo Trio which has made an outstanding job considering conditions were far less than ideal.
Desperation started to set in and on the 14th August and I started to combine OSR at 18% moisture. However this quickly dropped to 12% and by the end of the day was an amazing 9%. After completing the OSR we moved back to winter barley and managed to get all but 23 acres cut before the weather broke again.
Yields are surprisingly good but OSR is down on the 5year average and winter barley up.
