Hampshire OSR improves still further

At Breamore Estate in Hampshire, manager David Northway has seen his oilseed rape performance improve still further from the welcome bounce back of 2021; and this, despite not drilling his crops until early September.

Having almost exactly doubled the farm’s 2020 average to 4t/ha last season, this year’s 50/50 combination of DK Exsteel and DK Expectation delivered 4.3t/ha at 6% moisture – equivalent to almost 4.5t/ha at 9% moisture.

Take away pigeon-damaged areas on a shooting estate where gas gun siting has to be carefully controlled and David reckons real crop yields have been above 5t/ha.

“This year has been a perfect storm for our OSR but in the right direction,” he says. ”Even though we couldn’t get our 100ha sown before September we’ve had our best season for a good while. The crops were direct drilled with a specialist seedbed fertiliser and a range of companion crops as a trial.

A decent amount of moisture and a nice open autumn really helped. As did fewer flea beetles than we’ve seen for several years and little spring larval damage.

“Good prices have been the icing on the cake, this season,” he adds. “And, thankfully, there aren’t nearly some many beetles about in our harvested grain either which bodes well for our next crop.

“We’ll be growing about the same area of OSR again for 2023, hoping to take advantage of our much earlier harvest this time around to drill it by mid-August. We’ve been lucky enough to have some July rain but still need more for the greatest establishment confidence

The DEKALB Difference

ESTABLISHMENT ASSURANCE

All DEKALB hybrids are now covered by Bayer’s market-leading establishment assurance scheme, offering growers refunds of £100 per 1.5 million seed bag through their suppliers for any blocks of more than 6ha sown before September 20 that fail to establish by the end of October. Full details of the minimum hassle scheme are available here.