Grown in a non-wheat rotation, the winter barley on Grasby Farm usually follows beans or sugar beet. All of his barley straw is baled and sold either to JSR pigs or Charry Valley Ducks.
Cultivations are based around two main regimes, either plough, press and drill a one pass approach using a DTX Simba cultivator with its two rows of tines and then pressed and drilled.
Both methods were used this year for establishing barley crops, but the differences between them in crop establishment were negligible, he says.
Mr Thompson never drills his barley before the beginning of October, and uses a seed rate of around 155kg/ha. “This will be tweaked as I go along depending on field conditions, up to around 160kg/ha.”
LG Mountain offers a good all round disease resistance profile including BaYMV resistance. It has a rating of 7 for standing power, similar to that of KWS Gimlet and despite initial concerns from his agronomist with regards to the standing power of LG Mountain, the variety has showed no signs of lodging .
“If it was going down then this was the year it was going to happen, and we had no issues,” says Mr Thompson.
“Despite harvest conditions being drawn out and ‘iffy’ generally, the three fields of LG Mountain combined well and over the total of 11.3ha we harvested an average of 10t/ha, so I am very happy with its performance.”
- LG Mountain is one of the highest yielding 2 row feed varieties available at 105% over control on the AHDB Harvest Results 2019.*
- This yield has shown itself to be consistent across all regions and seasons in both treated and untreated trials.
- LG Mountain is a short strawed variety, with good all round disease resistance, including BaYMV resistance.
- The variety offers good grain quality attributes with a specific weight of 68.6 kg/hl, an important feature in a 2 row barley.*
- Offers early maturity +1**
Fungicide inputs for LG Mountain on Grasby Farm:
- GS30 1.5l/ha Manganese + 0.5l prothioconazole
- GS 31-32 0.75l/ha Manganese + 0.5l/ha pyraclostrobin/fluxapyroxad +0.4l/ha prothioconazole/trifloxystrobin + 0.70 CTL + 0.6l/ha Canopy + 0.7l/ha CTL
- GS 39-45 2.35l/ha azoxystrobin/trifloxystrobin/prothioconazole + 0.5l/ha prothioconazole + 0.4l/ha + pyraclostrobin/fluxapyroxad + 0.70l/ha + 0.7l/ha CTL
* AHDB Harvest Results 2019. Provisional results 11/9/19
** AHDB Recommended List data for Cereals and Oilseeds 2019/20
