In Your Field: Russell McKenzie - 'It's a time of year when black-grass looms large'

I quite enjoyed coming back to the maelstrom of a quarter of harvest completed last year.

The reason predominantly seems to be because of the way crops are moving so rapidly, we were fortunate to capture between 20-40mm of rain across the units two weeks ago, which literally was an absolute godsend.

Crops have responded accordingly, despite having a slow phase when flag leaf emergence stalled, we had some fields last week where they had moved rapidly from GS37 to boots splitting in seven days.

Spring crops have also responded, especially oats and barley, which are competing strongly with each other to see who can push the flag leaf out first, but generally both look stunning along with most of our wheat crops.

One crop that does not look like it has been enjoying conditions recently is spring beans. The coffin lid was hovering over them last year and a repeat poor performance will see the lid firmly closed and the nails installed.

But by comparison, their winter cousins look superb and provided they perform, I think it is looking highly likely to be a complete switch to winters over springs.