Harvest opens up again

The return of good harvesting conditions has seen combines rolling all over the country. A fine week would go close to getting the bulk of cutting wrapped up before the middle of August but the forecast may not enable this.

Crop yields are probably best described as disappointing to date with a bigger than normal range of field yields being reported. There are certainly very many yields that are well below average with grain fill being a limiting factor to output. But there are good yields too and this seems to be one of those years where previous soil conditioning or intensive crop care is paying off.

Problems arising from the challenging summer continue to have an impact on farm and crop output. Standing crops that show big proportions of white awns are the telltale sign for poor spring barley yield. Many winter wheat yields have been very disappointing to date also.

Sprouting in potatoes: This season has brought unprecedented problems in potatoes with the new tubers visibly sprouting in the ground long before they have reached full bulking. This is leaving a real problem about what, if anything, can be done. The only treatment option involves the use of maleic hydrazide, which is normally applied at the end of the season to help delay the onset of sprouting.

Advice on its use at this point in crop growth is very uncertain. It is the only product that may have an effect on sprouting but what does it do where sprouts are already evident or where granddaughter tubers already exist? Even the very basic question as to whether bulking can continue uninhibited post-treatment is not easily answered.

The major stress may well be heat rather than moisture related, but the combination of both certainly doesn’t help. Alternating stop-start growth conditions seem to be part of the trigger for the breaking of dormancy and this can even happen where irrigation was used because heat was the main cause of growth stoppage. The process is known as chain tuberisation.

This problem is sometimes seen in other countries and the presence of secondary growth is associated with glassy flesh, which can occur at either the mother end or the granddaughter end of the daughter tuber.

Uncertainty as to what is the correct thing to do has led some growers to burn off crops already to salvage what is there, while other crops have been burned off to salvage seed for next season. However, there is a real concern as to the possible difficulty of holding crops for seed which have already broken dormancy before harvest.

Stubbles

Some will take up the opportunity to grow fodder crops post-harvest. Get these planted as quickly as possible because every day means more yield. If you are not going to grow a catch crop then get stubbles cultivated to make use of the heat in the ground and the occasional rain to germinate weed seeds. And once you get a strike, cultivate again to kill what you have and get more to grow.