IT'S none of my business of course, but I do feel concerned each year when I see the neighbouring farmer's field containing wild oats among his cereal crops of barley or oats.
They are dark green weeds, and can easily be seen standing head and shoulders above the cultivated crop.
They usually start when an old hedge is torn up to increase the size of a field. I understand that the seeds are so hardy they could lie dormant deep among the hedge roots for decades: when the roots are dislodged, the seeds are dispersed and germinate.
Another way they spread, so the experts tell me, is by pigeons. They eat the seeds which are so hard they pass, undigested, through their bodies.
This is why wild oats can frequently be seen growing under trees. The pigeons perch in the branches and each time they fly out of the trees they discharge the virulent seeds.
Latin name: Avena fatua. Wild oat is an introduced annual grass weed of arable, waste and rough ground. In Britain, wild-oat was a more serious weed after the Second World War than in the pre-war years.
According to a 1951 survey, wild-oat was a problem weed in all parts of England where wheat and barley were grown.
It occurs on most types of soil but is particularly troublesome in cereals on heavy land. Wild-oat grows over a wide climate range but prefers cool, temporate conditions.
Over the past few years I've noticed quite a rapid spread of the the weed in the field near our house.
In fact, I reckon this year shows the increase may have quadrupled in 12 months.
In the absence of competition, a single well-tillered plant could produce up to 2,000 seeds.
However, in a cereal crop the average seed production is 60 seeds per plant. Wild-oat seeds are shed as they ripen and this occurs over an extended period.
When I was a seed salesman, on one occasion I got a complaint from a customer saying that his crop was infested with wild-oats. He claimed it must have been in the quality-tested seed he had bought from me.
I made a field visit with the farmer to see for myself. The first thing I noticed was that the wild-oats were in patches.
If, and there was no possibility, the weeds had been supplied in the company's seeds, they would have been spread evenly all over the field.
Secondly it was noticeable that the wild-oats were growing around the base of the trees, which confirmed my earlier point that pigeons were distributing the dreaded weed.
When I asked the farmer if he had removed a hedge, he admitted he had.
“Well, there's the answer,” I assured him.
The only real way to clear wild-oat from the field is by hand-roguing.
The plants must be pulled up completely and disposed of, preferably by burning.
Combines and other harvesting machinery should be cleaned to remove wild-oat seed.
Seeds collected during combining or seed cleaning should be burned and not fed to stock or tipped on manure heaps.
And finally: Did you hear about the young farmer who sowed his wild oats on Saturday night; on Sunday morning he was hoping for a crop failure!
