Harvest 2013

[franklin]

How the hell do you grow a 3.5 to 4 ton/acre crop of barley?

Problem isnt so much getting the yield but getting the yield and keeping it stood up. Or certainly accpeting that some will be flat to the floor.

 

[robbie]

Problem isnt so much getting the yield but getting the yield and keeping it stood up. Or certainly accpeting that some will be flat to the floor.

please tell us how weve tried everything and cant get above 3t/ac

 

[Bluetooth]

cant remember when last posted so
finished ww on 22 august 1 field yielded very well over 4t acre
spring barley was about 3t acre
finished osr on friday will be marginally above 1t/acre once dried not brilliant but about what we expected.
half a day of spring wheat to do not sure of yield but guessing at somewhere between 2.5-3t acre. would have liked to have left it till towards the end of the week to even up abit and allow us to get rape in. but the bloody wind s hammering it plenty on floor so daren't wait any longer.
could have cried baling the last 20 acres of sp barely straw this morning no swaths in half the field just a layer of straw across the lot

 

[franklin]

please tell us how weve tried everything and cant get above 3t/ac

I have never been but I hear that the "brecks" are a bit sandy? If so then complete contrast to me so probably different approach. Lack of moisture is very seldom an issue for me during grain fill.

 

[Chrisw]

Was hoping to post today that harvest for us was finished, but after the combine decided to throw some burning straw out the back in our last field yesterday afternoon, we won't be finished today!!
Crops been fairly good for us S.B averaging 2.5t/ac grain and 1.2t/ac straw, which for us is a very good average!

 

[JonL]

With wheat harvest complete yield on drilled area ranged from 1.6-4.6t/ac. Average just shy of 3.5. Down on 5 year average but nowhere near as bad as feared 6 months ago. OSR average so far is 1.7t/ac but I expect it to finish at approx 1.3 by the time we finish.

OSR finished 1.4t/ac which I wouldn't be too disappointed with in a "normal" year. All yields on drilled area, so including 60 acres of wheat and 95 acres of OSR that yielded nothing. All over a weighbridge.

 

[Tractor Boy]

OSR finished 1.4t/ac which I wouldn't be too disappointed with in a "normal" year. All yields on drilled area, so including 60 acres of wheat and 95 acres of OSR that yielded nothing. All over a weighbridge.

You must grow a heck of a lot of OSR or what did yield must have been fantastic, to have included 95 acres of nothing in your calculation! I think most of the yields on here are calculated on the thoughts of........that field is 15ha but I'll call it 12 ha as the bit in the corner is eaten by rabbits and that patch of black grass smothered the crop totally!

Fair play to you for doing it the proper way with drilled acreage and all weighed.

 

[Clive]

finished wheat today - finally found some good stuff up to 85kg/hl

tried the 16ha of spring OSR we have but not fit yet and 200ac of linseed to go at in about 10 days time

will get the drill out next week I reckon and get some wheat in

 

[JCfarmer]

Into S Barley, Tipple. Yielding 2.1t acre on one block and 3.3t acre the other, combine meter calibrated over weighbridge, unfortunately 1st block is the larger! Reasonably happy though. Still some left to do 21acres, hoping for around 2.5 on that.

 

[Wombat]

All done apart from Spring OSR which hasn't been rounduped yet as not quite ready.

SB 2t/acre could always be better but virtually no rain in April and May meant it didn't germinate well.

Wheat 3.5t/acre, a miracle considering the bigger block was only planted 1st Mar

 

[Chalky]

getting on in N Lincs. OSR eventually finished after the second lump done. All rape drilled went to harvest, 4.2t/ha over 260 Ha- some on rally heavy carr land that took up to ten slug pellet dressings last autumn. winter beans not great at 3-4 t/ha, but awful establishment but a great sample grown from C1 for larger areas in the future. Wheat bottom at 7.5 t/ha mauled after spuds to 11t/ha. Reckon we should not be far from average at about 9-9. something t/ha this year. Grow a lot of roots so a lot of late sown stuff last year/Jan. Have about 400 acres wheat left if all goes well thurs- 25%.Rape all in, rain due for heavy clay- just hope we don't get a deluge!

 

[Daniel]

Harvest home!!!

It's been so hot here today our resident dominatrix has been able to thunder into the night and knock over the last of the linseed, I've never seen it cut linseed after dark before without wrapping.

She's done approx 170 acres for the cost of £1200 in parts and 2 hrs downtime. Used about 6 litres an acre of fuel. Most of the parts cost was a new knife which was her 25th birthday present.

 

[Daniel]

Straight into the big poultry shed cleandown (see eerie poultry shed pic in the livestock section) tomorrow for 3-4 weeks before thinking about planting next years crops, no peace for the wicked!

 

[l'ordinary bonville]

Finished harvest tonight with some crap spring barley.

Now I can forget about the 2012/2013 season and move on!

 

[Northdowns Martin]

Noted a BBC2 programme on next week with same title as this thread.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2013/37/harvest-ep1.html

 

[DRC]

Still got 65 acres of wheat to do, but not panicking yet.At least i can go to my friends 50th bash this weekend.
Only hold up is that i would like to start spreading pig muck, but don't want to dirty the loader or hire a spreader until the wheat's in the shed.
I have noticed peoples beans around here are still very green, spring and winter sown.
They look like being ready in october.

 

[franklin]

Will try beans here next week. They have turned quite fast after 4lt of roundup and the last few hot days.

 

[Lincsman]

Finished harvest tonight with some crap spring barley.

Now I can forget about the 2012/2013 season and move on!

Did you say something similar after last harvest?

 

[l'ordinary bonville]

Did you say something similar after last harvest?

Probably.

I find that once you switch to autumn sowing mindset, you can feel the optimism and anticipation of a new growing season. This is true this year after my worst harvest yields ever.

Hopefully we are in a better situation this autumn than last year to get crops off to a good start

 

[DieselRob]

Harvest finished here on Wednesday, wb and sb did us proud averaging (est) 3.3t/ac and 2.2t/ac respectively. Now for the bad... osr averaged (weighed dry between 8 and 8.5%) 1.34t/ac over total area drilled, about 20% of area completely taken over by runch and shepards purse. WW, some did good, some bad and some ugly, annoyed to read on here how JB Diego did very well for some and yet when drilled in 1 of the best fields on farm and given the works it just scraped 3t even though it looked an amazing crop, 2 fields of Tuxedo were a whisker from being ripped up as it looked like there was nothing there middle of Feb did truely brilliant considering and achieved 3.2t and 3.5t (est). 1 field of early drilled Invicta did 4t but the rest of the wheats will of done between 3.2 and 3.5 (est) Ashby SW... after being told not to expect much yield and it looking to be a 2-2.5t crop because of short heads and long straw it has just weighed into store at 3.17t/ac I'm more than happy with that for sw and it will be grown again after fodder beet instead of SB. Fuego S Beans after necking over a month ago they were combined on Wednesday at 16.5% and (est) yield would be around 1.5t but will know once they have been dried/cleaned and into store over weighbridge.

Considering the growing year we have had across the country I'm happy to close the grainstore door and say "it could've been a lot worse"