Steve Heard: Early crops establish well

I can’t understand why manufacturers are building them with such shiny white blades, when all we want is for them to be as unobtrusive as possible and blend into the skyline.

We resprayed ours in a particular grey paint, which has been researched to best camouflage its existence. It may not make it disappear, but it certainly helps.

This is obviously a longer-term investment, and time will tell if production matches the supplier’s (www.less-co2.co.uk) claims, but with more than 5,000kW already on the meter, things look good so far.

September’s weather has been kind to us - our OSR drilling was finally completed by the fourth and crops have established well.

With the exception of one field, they have only received a one-third rate application of slug pellets during drilling. All fields have now been sprayed with a post-em herbicide and insecticide.

A few weeks ago, I received an ADAS email update, informing me to expect ‘medium’ black-grass dormancy, yet some of our stale seedbeds this year have resembled Wimbledon centre court. Early cultivations have allowed a fantastic first attack of glyphosate pre-drilling, and so far we are up-to-date with a pre-em spray on nearly all the wheat ground.

Near-perfect seedbeds brought our 8m Vaderstad drill out of the barn just before the middle of the month, and now all wheats, with the exception of some seed plots, have been established.

Early crops are emerging nicely, and hopefully growing away from what seems a relatively low level of slugs. With metaldehyde constantly in the headlines, it is great to be able to reduce applications and save money.

Having all attended a training course earlier in the year, I would, however, like to invite the instructor on to our farm.

He assured us slugs don’t actually appear from hedges and that applications are not required to field edges. I guess it must be the little bogey men trying to graze my OSR boundaries, then?

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