Following the drill on cover

If 2020 has so far proved a nightmare year for game crops, all is not lost, says Liam Bell

- Liam Bell

Establishing game cover in 2020 has been no easier than it was in 2019, but for very different reasons.

Last year, the main problems were cold, wet soil and too few warm, dry growing days to get the crops moving in May and June when spring crops get their roots down and really push on.

This year the weather has been the exact opposite. For many of us it was too dry when we were drilling, with very little moisture to get the seeds started.

Here, we decided to hold off as long as we could in the vain hope that we would get some rain. But it never really amounted to much and when it did arrive, the ground was so dry that it didn’t really soak in or make much of a difference.

The crops were planted in less than ideal conditions, but if we hadn’t got them into the ground when we did, they would be even poorer. It is always a difficult call.

We moved away from ploughing a number of years ago, changing to simply discing and drilling for a few years. We have now gone even further down the minimum tillage route and we drill our crops with a single pass of an all-singing, all-dancing drill.

No working down or pre-sowing preparation at all, other than an application of glyphosate if the area is especially grassy or has too many docks or thistles, just a single pass of the drill into the topped-off crop from the year before.