Early sown Grouse’s tillering ability provides yield success

Harvest Stories: Frank Stennett

Early drilling and a higher seed rate, plus the ability of RGT Grouse to tiller and its propensity for retaining those tillers, are perhaps behind the variety’s surprising yield success for Frank Stennett on his farms on the Norfolk / Suffolk border.

In a year where virtually every other variety’s performance, including high-yielding feed varieties such as Champion, was bordering on disastrous on the mostly light sandy soils at Place Farm, Ingham, RGT Grouse stood out, Frank says.

“We grow Grouse because we can drill it early and it is tolerant to barley yellow dwarf virus, which is useful with the no-insecticide payment in SFI, if you qualify,” he says.

“But it’s also a highly vigorous variety that tillers a lot and retains its tillers. This season [with the very dry spring and summer] has favoured a variety like Grouse because it’s been a very clean season in terms of disease.”

One 25ha plus field averaged over 9t/ha, with the combine yield monitor showing areas as high as 13-14t/ha in parts of the fields, all the way down to 5.5-6t/ha on a sandy headland, he reports.

“The other fields were around 8-8.5t/ha, with specific weights of 74kg/hl, which is above the 72kg/hl threshold for feed. It yielded like in a normal year.”

With most of the 90ha of RGT Grouse drilled in the last week of September, performance might have been inadvertently helped by Frank upping seed rates to use up available seed for the area grown.

“Seed rate was up closer to 400 seeds/sqm. I think a lot of crops didn’t tiller early as there was no moisture to take up early fertiliser, but with our high seed rate and early drilling, there was already a lot of stems and tillers. Grouse’s ability to retain those tillers, I think, helped a lot,” he says.