David Hoyles of GH Hoyles Ltd in Long Sutton, Lincolnshire, is very pleased with his late September drilled seed crop of biscuit wheat LG Astronomer.

Two fields harvested on 27^th & 28^th July, yielded between 13.2-13.4 t/ha, and achieved between 13.3-13.6% moisture.

The five-year farm average is 11.6 t/ha. “This does include two lower yielding seasons where we had very wet autumns and lower levels of radiation in the spring,” points out Mr Hoyles.

Both fields followed vining peas and were min tilled and drilled in late September.

“We had very little disease at the beginning of the season, so skipped the T0. It was wet in April so the T1 was more robust, containing Revystar (47.5 g/l fluxapyroxad and 100 g/l mefentrifluconazole), Arizona (folpet) and a good dose of PGR.”

However, it was dry again by T2 he points out, so only Firefly (10 g/l prothioconazole and 45 g/l fluoxastrobin) and boron were applied.

“An earlier than normal T3 at the end of May (T3’s usually go on in the second week of June), consisted of Uinvoq (50g/L fenpicoxamid &100 g/l prothioconazole) & boron.”

“We didn’t have any issues with Septoria, which we know was a concern with some of the Group 3’s last year. As Astronomer is tall, we ensured the PGR programme was robust, and consequently had no problems with lodging.”

“We were disappointed that we didn’t have as much soil N after the vining peas as we had hoped for, which meant the crop received a total of 160kg N/ha which was applied in the seedbed, and three follow up applications.”