Peak plant protection: Just as the majority of crops arrive at a peak plant protection period the weather breaks. Hopefully it will not be too bad and that there will be spraying opportunities in the week ahead. It is perhaps ironic that many fields could benefit from a soft day.

Crops vary a lot in growth stage. Winter barley is from strong GS31 to flag leaf emerged while wheat varies from GS30 to third last leaf fully emerged and the second last almost there too. Oat crops vary from second node to flag leaf peeping. So decisions and advice on what to do must be field based.

Crops have greened up well and there has been a lot of leaf growth but growth regulators have kept the handbrake on extension or elongation. Early sown spring crops are growing well and the earliest are now into mid tillering.

Planting: Virtually all cereals are planted and attention has switched to maize, beet and potatoes. The roughness of the exposed soil between plastic rows in maize is noticeable and will impact on residual herbicides to make post emergence treatment almost inevitable. Land is slow to dry out at depth and this has slowed potato planting.

The recent hash weather and heat could well drive micro-nutrient deficiencies. The advice must always be to prevent symptoms appearing. Symptoms mean lost yield potential which is not recovered by treatment.

Nitrogen: Malting barley should receive its total N by the 2-3 leaf stage. This is important for crops emerging now as there is likely to be some rain to wash it in. Early N on feed barley, wheat and oats is less urgent where there is N in the seedbed but it needs to be applied and washed in by GS30.

N rates must vary with crop and field. Bring barley up to 120-140kg/ha, wheat up to 120-150kg/ha and oats to 100-120kg. Use lower rates where soil N may be higher and higher rates on very worn ground. Remember, there may be more soil N in seedbeds this spring.

Spraying: The main jobs are disease control with possible top-up on growth regulator and the control of wild oats, grasses and others such as cleavers or poppy. Wild oats seem particularly numerous in places this year.

T1 fungicides on wheat should be applied when the third last leaf is fully emerged leaving the second last leaf well exposed also. T1 sprays on wheat might be products like Elatus Era, Aviator, Ascra, Adexar, Cauldron or some other SDHI plus triazole combination. All sprays need to have chlorothalonil included.

A T1 on barley could be Elatus Era, Siltra, Fandango or Zephyr. A stop-gap second spray on barley might be a triazole plus a low rate of either a strobilurin or an SDHI, whichever was not used last time. Oat crops tend just to have mildew and so an option like Tocata tends to be well suited after GS32. There may also be benefit from a low rate of a second growth regulator on oat crops between GS32 and GS37 with products like Ceraide or Medax Max or K2.