Its now the time of the year that we sit back and watch the crops fulfill their potential. There is nothing more that we can do to the crops to ensure that they grow the most that they are going to. Wheat is our main crop on the farm grown mostly for human consumption, with some grown specifically for animal feed. It was planted in September and since then we have been busy ensuring that it has the best chance in life.

The first threat came from slugs, I spent a good deal of my time from September until November monitoring the crops for an attack from this slimy enemy. We monitor the numbers of slugs in the area, and if the numbers reach a specific threshold we have to use slug pellets - these are a pesticide which are supposed to be selective in that they only target slugs and snails. When I use slug pellets I see it as a sign that there is something in my system that is failing, in a perfect system with healthy soils slugs don't present themselves as a threat. There are enough natural predators around to keep the slug numbers below the treatment threshold. This year I had to use a lot of slug-pellets the slugs were around in huge populations and did some real damage to my crops, they were able to move about in the wet conditions and they bred loads.

The next threat is weeds. We use a herbicide to prevent weeds from over competing with the crop as it grows. Weeds compete with the crop for light, water and nutrients, so it is important that we control them. Some weeds are harder to control than others - my hardest weed to control is a grass-weed called brome grass. it is hard to deal with because it is so similar to wheat, and herbicides work by exploiting the differences between wheat and the weed species. It could take a couple of approaches to sort out the weeds through the season, but the first application is usually in the autumn. On some of the crops this year we were unsure whether the crops were going to make it through the winter so we delayed controlling the weeds which has led to more weeds in the fields at this time of year.

In the spring I start by giving the crops some nitrogen allow the plants. They receive three dose's of nitrogen through the season. We are quite unique here in that we apply sugar in the form of molasses along with the fertiliser. We do this because we are trying to make the process that turns applied nitrogen into food for the plants more efficient. The plants do not take up the nitrogen that we apply directly it has to go be taken up by the bacteria in the soil and then the waste from this process is what feeds the plant. The idea of applying sugar is that we can give the soil bacteria more energy so that they reproduce quicker and producer more waste from naturally occurring nitrogen in the air, thus reducing our reliance on artificial nitrogen. It will be years before we start to see real benefits from this work, but I figure the sooner I start the sooner I'll see the benefits. Because our crops were looking at bit average this year I reduced the total amount of nitrogen that I applied to the fields. The crop was really varied across each field so I used satellite pictures to identify the better bits of the field and I chose to apply a normal rate to the better areas and reduce the rate on the poorer looking bits.

As the crop is growing it suffers from various fungal attacks, I control these with fungicides at two/three/four stages of the plants growth depending on the year. The aim of using these products is to keep the last three remaining leaves of the plant as green as possible for as long as possible, with the last fungicide aimed at the ear in a bid to keep mycrotoxins of the marketed grain. It is important to keep the leaves green because they are vital for photosynthesis which produces growth and ultimately yield. The most important leaf is the last one to come out - it is called the flag leaf and it the one nearest the ear. Any reduction in the green area of this leaf has a direct impact on final yield.

I have now completed all of these husbandry tasks and it is now down to how much sunlight and available moisture is around which will determine the final yields. It is typically the time of year that farmers invite neighbours to come around and judge each-others crops and I have two coming on Thursday to look at my winter rape and spring barley - Wish me luck!