Keeping wheat crops upright this season is a serious challenge for this Hampshire grower, as David Millar finds out with our troubleshooter Mark Glyde. Will butler can go to bed with a perfect 9t/ha crop in the field and wake up next morning to findit totally flat. Keeping wheat upright at Whitewool Farm, near West Meon, Hampshire, is an annual challenge due to the uneven topography and high fertility made worse this year by waterlogged fields that have demolished the first establishment plan usedby Mr Buffer and arable consultant Mark Glyde, of Hambleden-based Crop Management Services. Instead of having all the cereals nicely tucked in by the end of November, the combination drill was still working in mid-January and one 16ha (40 acres) field ploughed in readiness last autumn after peas may not even get the fall-back crop of maize so difficult is it to get on. Continual waterlogging of the soil since October means new springs have appeared on the up-and-down Hampshire landscape where neither Mr Buffer or his father have seen them before. Hopes of a simple approach to wheat agronomy have been washed away with the 56in of rain that fell in the year to December. Growth and root development varies from field to field as must the remedy to keep the new crop standing.
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