Very pleasing borders result in Northumbria
Posted 6 years ago
18/08/2020
As he nears the end of his OSR harvest at Coldstream in the Scottish Borders, McGregor Farms’ arable manager, David Fuller is well pleased with the way his oilseed rape has battled through the very wet winter and dry spring.
Although not quite matching the 5.09 t/ha he brought in from the 300 ha of his Number One variety, DK Expansion last season, the 162 ha that has gone over the weighbridge so far has averaged 4.86 t/ha with one 37 ha field doing 5.3 t/ha. A further 37 ha block of DK Exsteel planted as a look-see did almost as well at 5.2t/ha.
“We can’t be unhappy with yields running at 2.5% up on our five year average,” he points out. “Especially so, as we drilled later than we like last autumn, our crops sat with their feet wet from the end of September through to February and the very dry spring prevented them from taking-up the last of their nitrogen until June.
“I must confess I was concerned earlier on. But I needn’t have been. We had a really nice flowering with bags of sunshine, and the delayed N uptake almost certainly did us a favour. Well-filled pods with good-sized seeds really helped.”
A combination of a timely winter barley harvest, fallow ground – which proved impossible to sow with wheat after September 23 – and decent levels of soil moisture means the McGregor Farms’ team should have their OSR in at least a week earlier this autumn.
DK Expansion again figures strongly in their planting plans, alongside a similarly large area of the triple eight breakthrough, DK Exstar that slightly out-performed DK Exsteel in their farm strip trials this season and offers an even better package of disease resistance and standing power.