Wednesday 15 October 2014

Catch 22

What a difference a fortnight makes. Turning the clock back to less than 2 weeks ago in fact; the soil was hard, dry with anything that had been cultivated over the summer period and not rolled to conserve the moisture. The dreaded Blackgrass was sitting dormant in the dust refusing to germinate and succumb to cheap effective glyphosate, we needed some rain. Then on the 4th October it started to rain. Brilliant we all thought, a few good steady showers to soften the ground and get the weeds to grow but then we seem to have shifted from summer straight into winter with 62.2mm of rain falling in the following 10 days.

On the positive side the Blackgrass flush is well and truly under-way and so, when we do get drilling again we should have a much cleaner seedbed in which to plant and less competition from this invasive weed in the crop. The only question is when are we likely to be able to get drilling again?