The key to weed control success in spring barley
With a record one million hectares of spring barely planted this year, and rain early this month, growers are under pressure to control weeds in a narrow window of opportunity, so herbicide formulation could make all the difference.
We’ve grown 30 per cent more spring barley than usual mainly because we couldn’t drill our winter wheat last autumn in the wet conditions.
We usually grow spring cereals purely to help combat blackgrass, but this season has been so challenging weatherwise that we’ve had to plant 60 per cent of our crops as spring cereals to fill this gap.
Not being able to drill the spring barley until the first half of April has meant the dry conditions have had an impact on establishment, and because all our spring crops were planted at the same time, our spring workload is going to be condensed and a lot higher than usual.
Because of this, the spraying programme will be a challenge. As we need to target our broad leaf weed control at GS30 we will have a very short window to get this applied to the crop.
To make this as efficient as possible and reduce travelling we tank-mix an SU herbicide with a fungicide and PGR.
Colin Woodward is a farm manager and crop consultant
