Planting: Conditions remain good for planting, despite some rain in places over the weekend. Rolling is still possible post-planting and this is very useful to help establishment, to slow or prevent pest damage and to tighten the soil to help prevent root-roll lodging.

Establishment looks good everywhere, but temperatures remain cool – this is helping to slow growth in early crops. It is now safer to drill wheat into fields with high take-all risk, or to plant winter oats in fields that have wild oats.

Establishing crops are generally pest free, but birds are lifting seeds in places and slugs could be triggered into activity again if we get a wet spell or a sharp frost. Low temperatures should help contain aphids, but make sure that all cereal crops are covered against BYDV.

Winter barley planting should be completed as soon as possible, so the main planting activity will be wheat, oats and some winter malting. Plant winter wheat around 300-350 seeds/m2 – 150-175kg/ha (9.5-11st/acre) for 50g seed. Winter malting barley should go in at around 380 seeds/m2 or 180kg/ha (11st/acre). Complete oat planting at 350 plus seeds/m2 or 140-155kg/ha (9-10st/acre) for 40g seed.

Soil testing: All land should have a recent soil test to guide fertiliser application. But for tests to be useful you need to take representative samples from fields. Use your knowledge to do this. You can take samples now, even if crops are already planted, providing no form of fertiliser has been applied. Lime remains the most important input.

Spraying: The two main targets are herbicide and insecticide. Spray emerged crops with insecticide after the two-leaf stage, unless the seed was treated with Redigo Deter. Apply a full rate of a contact insecticide like Sumi Alpha, Karate, Toppel, Decis, etc, to control aphids. Where Deter was used for September planting, an aphicide should be applied within six weeks of crop emergence.

Herbicide timing is more versatile, but Defy is mainly residual and should be applied before the two-leaf stage on wheat (not on oats). Many early sown crops are already sprayed for grass weeds with products like Alister, Firebird or Flight, but treatment on later-sown crops will be mainly based around PDM or IPU, along with either DFF, Defy or Sumimax. One might also consider manganese or a multi-trace element mix where deficiencies are likely.

Many rape crops have a lot of volunteers and/or grass weeds present and these need to be controlled before the canopy gets too strong. Options include Aramo, Falcon, Fusilade and Stratos Ultra. Where no herbicide has been applied to date, one can still use Kerb Flo or Astro Kerb once the crop has been hardened by frosty conditions.

Crops that have weeds like charlock, chickweed, shepherds purse, hedge mustard and poppy can be hit with up to 25g/ha of Salsa plus a wetter.