Steve Heard: A drought in March comes at the wrong time for the new rain gauge

The beginning of March saw the arrival of a new fancy electronic rain gauge, complete with a full 28-day money back guarantee if not completely satisfied. Perfect timing for exactly four weeks with no rain to measure.

Even without a stimulating rain, and having been applied amongst some sharper than expected frosts, the herbicide seems to have done a successful job of eliminating blackgrass, without visibly checking the wheat – more than can be said for my earlier propyzamide and tebuconazole + prothloconazole application to the OSR.

Some overlaps made while ‘learning’ my new sprayer last November did not show until nearly 14 weeks later, as the crop tried to grow away.

Patches of dead leaf certainly acted as a nasty reminder of how much quicker the new sprayer line comes up to pressure compared with anything I have operated before. I’m relieved to say the crop eventually recovered as new leaf growth greened over the seemingly bare scorched patches.

It is always a challenge to leave the last granular nitrogen application on the OSR as late as possible, although this year high winds and a machine breakdown conspired to let some fields even start to yellow before we arrived.

So I was quite relieved that, having tied a sheet under the belly of the tractor, no sign of damage was evident even in the tallest of crops.

The fact we were still 10 days earlier than the same application last year means I might still have to consider a further foliar nitrogen spray post-flowering, even though our previous trials have been less than conclusive.

My most recent excursion through the OSR has been to apply a first schlerotinia spray (azoxystrobin + cyproconazole) mixed with insecticide and a trace elements foliar feed. Crops are forward and do look really promising. However, I’m very conscious that any late frosts could still be very damaging.

Having previously applied a T0 to all the wheats, timing for the T1 fungicide is more flexible and probably still a week or so away, even for the earliest crops.

Wheats this year look really well, having shed less tillers than in the last few late winters, but all our crops will soon become desperate for some rain if our region’s spring drought does continue.

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