Winter ploughing: Now that December is with us the season opens for winter ploughing. Up to quite recently the land was generally dry down in the ground but this might change from now on. If you have a good cover of vegetation on some fields be slow to plough those as the cover is helping to protect your soil.

To plough it up and leave it is merely exposing your soil to additional damage from winter rainfall. That said it is useful to have some land ploughed in winter to have less work to do in springtime. Always target the heavier more stubborn land for winter ploughing, if you can get it ploughed, as it will benefit most from the formation of a frost tilth.

The challenge may be to get land in good enough condition to plough for a few weeks.

While stubbles can now be burned off or ploughed for spring, only spray off vegetation if it is carrying significant weeds, pests or diseases. Remember that your soil should be bare for as short a time as is possible to help protect it. So only spray off what needs to be sprayed off in the near future.

Crows continue to do damage and pose a real threat in some establishing crops.

Catch crops/Cover crops/GLAS: This has been a particularly successful year for these crops following two very difficult years. Many were sown quite early and most have grown well to produce quite an amount of vegetation. Some are being fed now with some being grazed in situ. In some instances this is resulting in significant damage to soil.

Worn tillage soils do not lend themselves well to winter grazing. It is interesting to remember that some farmers try to leave some of the cover crop in situ during grazing to enable some regrowth to help protect the soil beneath.

This will not be a perfect cover but it would be far better than a bare soil, especially where it has been poached during grazing. Those who have been using this system for years aim to leave almost half of the crop in situ which also means that the grazing animals get regular access to clean fresh feed to give higher average animal performance.

Where a green cover is to be incorporated rather than grazed delay spraying off unless there is some urgent reason to do so like weeds flowering or the crop is going to seed. Depending on the growth levels present, a sprayed-off crop may still provide useful soil cover for some time post desiccation.

It is obvious travelling the country that a number of fields are now covered in yellow flowers which appears to be the brassica going to seed. This is not a good situation as flowered crops can be dangerous to grazing animals or, if they are not being grazed, they can return seeds that could become a weed problem in the future.

Soil testing: Now is the time to get soil tests taken and analysed for spring planting. Soil tests are now only valid for four years and a test result is needed for every 4-5ha. You should be aware of the fertility in every field if you hope to produce high yields.