Rye not? Darren weighs up the results of his cereals trials at Ballymaloe Farm

Darren Allen pictured with his wheat crop earlier this year. The crop ultimately yielded 4.5t/ac. Picture: Dan Linehan

The winter oilseed rape yield 2t/ac, which I’m happy enough with. The winter wheat did very well, yielding around 4.5 t/ac.

I did some of my own trials with establishment methods and biologicals, which had interesting results. The winter wheat established with a strip-till method has outperformed the plough, with respect to the yield and the profit margin. I applied pig slurry in the spring to my growing crop of winter wheat, which is a bit of a venture into the unknown, but I had no lodging, and I definitely got better value out of the slurry than if I had just applied it to stubbles.