Bateman Sprayers | News | Bycott Farm Diary | December 2025
Bycott Farm Diary: December 2025
As I look back over the season at Bycott Farm, it’s hard not to feel quietly proud of what has been achieved. The winter oats were even better than the best year ever and that best year was only a year before. From the outset, everything just seemed to line up.
We had a dry spring. While the rest of the country suffered a lot, we didn’t. We were fortunate to keep having showers through April, just enough to keep the crops alive and ticking over. That balance meant there was very little disease pressure, helped no end by the dry spring conditions.
A lot of the success goes back to the previous autumn. The crops were drilled in good time, with drilling carried out on the 15th of September 2024 using the Mzuri drill. Conditions were ideal; the dry autumn meant crops got up well, established evenly and then just stuck the winter without fuss.
February was kind too. Because we had a dry February, we were able to get an early fertiliser on all the crops, wheat, barley and oats through February and March. That early nutrition really showed later in the season.
The barley harvest was exceptionally good again. We also gathered a large amount of straw, which was sold to a local livestock farm. The wheat was a particular highlight; combined for the first time in probably six years, it yielded 8.4 tonnes per hectare at 16.5 MC. The oat yield returned 42.2 tons per hectare at 38% dry matter, which was taken for wholecrop in early July.
Bringing things up to date, all fields at Bycott are looking well, bar two fields of wheat. We’re on heavier land here, we couldn’t get on these fields quickly enough. Still, spirits are high. I hope you all enjoy a well-deserved break before we do it all again and I look forward to seeing many of you at the shows in 2026.
Matthew Alford is our Agronomist, and has been working with us since 2019.
Before his current role with Agrii, Matthew gained extensive experience using Bateman Sprayers and spent 5 years contract spraying at Bycott Farm.