I guess the winter crop has more time to get over blips in the growing season.
If one has easily worked medium textured soil then there are loads of options whereas really light soils can be too light for winter wheat to finish properly.
My own view is that break crops are hugely beneficial, even if the only cereal you grow is spring barley.
Our current rotation here (the plan anyway!) is WOSR, WW, WW, S Barley, S Beans, WW, WW, W Barley, WOSR.
This keeps a good gap between rape crops and also between bean crops.
If one decides to bring in a break crop sooner then that’s ok too as it’ll be a different one from last time around.
Wheat will be seed and spring barley will be malting where possible.
We have some ground where spring beans might be a challenge to get sown on time but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The above rotation should keep the goal posts moving from a grass weed point of view too.
Too many over here are going with a continuous winter barley rotation (or lack of) and I think it’s a disaster from a grass weed and yield point of view.
Interesting rotation. We couldn’t do that here.
2nd wheats are a complete waste of time and winter barley after 2 wheats would be a disaster.
We used to follow WW with WB but struggled for yield. We now follow WW with Winter Oats and then plant WB after the Oats. Added between 1/2t - 1t/acre to our barley yields.