When David Ruffin, lead singer of The Temptations uttered these near-immortal words in ’65, little did he know that climate change was soon to wreak havoc with his rhetoric. Looking out at the skies over the first couple of days of May and you’d be forgiven for wondering what on earth he was referring too, all those years ago. Fear not however, as the oh-so-reliable Met Office assured us that we were in for yet another barn-storming bank holiday weekend! This certainly bodes well for our crops, with a prospective sowing date set for the middle of next week when soils will be warm, and the weather returned to its usual showery self. This period, known by arable farmers as ‘purgatory’, represents the slim window between the date crops can be sown from, and the conditions most-suited to sowing in.
Getting crops away – a farmy way of articulating the emergence and subsequent canopy-closure of crops – in the most suitable conditions is half the battle. Crops that struggle in the beginning are often destined for a growing season of strife, never quite recovering from their false start. Conversely, crops that get away healthily give themselves a far greater chance of success. Heading into year 1 at this stage feels comparable to a game of pin the proverbial tail on the right planting date…. I mean donkey. Subsequent years, however, will be informed by the generation of our own data, not only relates to our crops, but to our exact location and climate conditions also.
