Harvest in full swing: A week ago there had been very little winter barley ready for harvesting. This has changed. While broken weather continues to slow harvesting, there was a lot of cutting done over the past week and a bigger proportion of the crop is now just about ripe.

Harvest reports are increasingly variable. While the top end of reports seem to sit around 4.3t/ac, more crops are falling in to the sub-three-tonne level.

It is difficult to know if yield levels will increase or decrease as the harvest progresses, but it seems likely that there is less to be optimistic about as it moves north.

It would appear that grain fill was helped by the surge of growth following the rain and the crops that had a good ear population with slightly bigger heads turned in a good performance with somewhat bigger grains. The only thousand grain weight that I am aware of to date is just over 55g on a six-row variety that had a mid-60s specific weight.

Harvesting of winter oats and winter oilseed rape has also begun but there is not much to report yet, other than yield variability. The one report I have for oilseed rape is not exciting from a dry site.

Pre-harvest: Crops contain a lot of variability due to patchiness caused by winter wet and a surge of late green tillers in some crops following the rain. Some crops may require treatment but avoid doing what is not essential, given the current sensitivity regarding pre-harvest use of glyphosate. That said, it may be essential on some spring crops where there is a big volume of late green tillers present.

Stubbles: Many crops encountered a late surge of weeds following the summer rain. Many of these have set seeds and this points to additional benefit from stubble cultivation, if you can get most of these to germinate.

There are very many good reasons to cultivate stubbles, including residue incorporation, weed seed germination, pest reduction etc. But you need to know what you want the cultivations to achieve. Machine settings are important – it’s not just a matter driving across a field to change its colour. See basic guidelines here.

Early cultivation is best. This is when most of our problematic grass weeds prefer to germinate so it’s the best place to tackle and reduce seed numbers in the ground. Once you see a cultivated stubble greening up, cultivate again to kill what has germinated and to encourage even more seeds to germinate. The earlier you can begin, the greater can be the impact on your weed seed bank in the soil. This is especially important on owned land. If you can get two flushes and then sow a cover crop you will be doing your land and yourself a huge favour.

All stubbles not destined for winter cropping should be sown to catch crops, especially owned land. Leaving land idle for any period is bad for the land and the environment. Use the opportunity to produce organic matter for your land, or to feed, or to sell. The benefits of catch cropping accumulate annually.