Almost by mistake we have a classic demonstration of two very different plant establishment techniques.

We had ploughed six or seven acres for the beans in late February but despite the previous dry few weeks, the land ploughed up too wet to consider tilling it and we effectively abandoned it until the third week in April.

The rest of the land destined for beans was left in a messy tangle of grass, together with cereal and oilseed rape volunteers.

On the same day in April, we tilled the ploughed ground with a disc fitted with crumbler bars and sowed into an excellent tilth with a direct drill – though it could just as easily have been done with a normal one-pass system.

We continued straight from the tilled ground to the undisturbed weedy stubble. Not surprisingly, the beans emerged evenly and quickly in the tilled ground while the slits in the stubble were much slower to show any signs that they held seeds ready to germinate. Well they have germinated now – lines of young bean shoots are peeping through the Round-up treated volunteers. It is a bit early to say what the relative plant populations are and of course the ultimate answer will be the yields returned from the two systems. It’s clear though, that from fuel consumption and soil disturbance points of view, and from a personal farming viewpoint, we are into new territory.

Meanwhile more conventionally, the awns on the winter barley are now emerging and the oilseed rape is past full flowering. While we will need to apply some nitrogen and late plant protection, we are essentially now waiting for the ripening process to lead us to harvest and the financial results for the year’s work.

The other part of the year’s income is the new single farm payment. While the application date is later this year, we submitted it online earlier this week. This year of course we applied for the two schemes – the normal acreage related one and the new Eco-scheme. We easily met the criteria for the Eco-scheme, though I am still not sure with all the changes how much we are likely to receive, but looking at the futures prices for cereals, the CAP payment is going to be critically important this year.