Farming Talk: Crop spraying is like Russian roulette game

Extreme – that's the only way to describe it. The informed decision-making I wrote about in my April column goes out of the window when you have to play Russian roulette with our extreme climate.

For instance, three weeks ago we were backing off with the crop spraying as it was to cold and wet and then it was too hot. It is hard to judge if the fertiliser being applied is going to get washed away in monsoon-like rain or evaporate in the hot sun.

It is not skill that's needed, just luck it seems, but I am not complaining as the wheat looks really well and certainly holds a lot more promise than this time last year. It has compensated well and filled any gaps up considering how low some of the seed rates were when it finally did germinate.

T2 fungicide is on the wheat now with flag leaf emergence slow due to cold weather and very variable across the fields.

Although flag leaf was not fully out everywhere, we were up to a three-week gap since the T1 fungicide was applied so we needed to keep it protected. We have gone for SDHI fungicides for the T2 treatment, of either Pexan at 1.0lt/ha or Seguris at 0.8lt/ha.

The oilseed rape has also had a second fungicide dose to control sclerotinia. I have never sprayed rape when there has been so much pollen. The sprayer was absolutely covered in it, much more than normal, and I was having to wash the radiators out as it was sucking so much of the yellow mulch in it was it was overheating. First time for everything I suppose.

The torrential rain has done nothing for the freshly planted potatoes, with areas of water lying in the hollows having run down the slopes, which I would imagine has now rotted the seed.

Spraying them was a disaster for the contractors, almost getting stuck the first time they tried and then battling with high winds the second. It was a bad sign to see the big new Bateman sprayer parked on the headland acting as a bowser, while the field was being sprayed by an older and lighter Hi-Lo machine, the only way they could make progress.

Despite my best efforts to resist buying it, a shiny new John Deere T660i combine has arrived on the farm. I was offered a deal I could not turn down that was just too tempting when I worked out what the last one had cost per acre.

This is a direct replacement, the only difference being the new cab and Hillmaster levelling system.

Tim Cooke is an arable farmer near Telford