The pros and cons of late-sowing winter cereal

can often be stressful.

There is also a theoretical risk that winter cereals sown in spring don’t get enough vernalisation, which is a fancy way of saying that a crop that does not flower or set a head and spends its entire life just producing leaves.

It is a very rare occurrence but it does happen. Vernalisation is a variety-specific trait and all varieties have a ‘latest sowing date’ established that should overcome this risk.

That risk addressed, the main activity we can do to protect late-sown crop is to consign the roller to the nettles in the yard. Once a crop is up and tillering it can be rolled, but rolling post-sowing can be a great help or turn into a disaster, depending on future weather. You can’t ‘unroll’ a field, so best leave it out for the time being.

Spring-sown winter varieties will not yield the same as autumn-sown crops, but can yield the same or more than spring-sown varieties. Production costs will have to reflect potential yield, so fertiliser applied, fungicide used, even herbicide costs will have to be rigorously scrutinised.

Indeed if the weather was to turn really cold and ground dried out quickly, there is a huge opportunity to delay cultivation until the various closed slurry period have passed and utilise the bulging slurry stores that are around the county.

A good coating of slurry at this time of year could meet all the P and K requirements and the initial N requirement of a crop that could otherwise struggle to wash its face, as well as providing a helping hand to highly stocked dairy farms. It is worth considering.