🌾 Barley
A spring cereal. For malting barley the best preceding crops are oat and oilseeds.
Sowing
VYR (malting barley sheet): a well-worked, even, moist and warm seedbed. Certified seed evens emergence. Malting barley uses a higher seed rate than feed barley so it does not tiller too much.
Soil and parcel
VYR: check that pH is good. Do not sow barley straight after barley, wheat or rye if you want to avoid foot rot (aoe.fi, Luke).
Fertilising
VYR: high-yielding malting varieties, about 100 kg nitrogen at sowing. If the preceding crop is a legume or a green-manure ley, allow for 20–40 kg of nitrogen that will be released.
Yield and harvest
Malting quality needs an even crop. VYR: protection as needed keeps it even. Healthy seed lowers Fusarium risk; direct drilling and shallow tillage raise it.
🔄 In the rotation
- Role
- A cereal that needs a break crop. Oat and oilseed are good preceding crops (VYR).
- Good preceding crop
- Best after oat or an oilseed (VYR). Not after barley, wheat or rye last year if foot rot is the worry.
- Good following crop
- Not straight into another barley or wheat. Early barley can precede rye (VYR).
- Gap on the same parcel
- Not back to back with barley, wheat or rye. Five cereal years in a row is cereal monoculture (Luke 2025).
Other crops
Sources
- VYR: Mallasohran viljelyopas – muokkaus, kylvö, lannoitus
- Viljelykierrot – oppimateriaali (Avointen oppimateriaalien kirjasto aoe.fi)
- Luke (MTT): Viljan tyvitautien esiintyminen Etelä-Suomessa
Links open public guides. Always check your own contract and parcel advice.
General rotation advice – not a substitute for advice, a contract or the law. Figures come from the sources, not from invention.