🌾 Rye
A winter cereal that spreads the workload and covers the soil over winter. Sowing date decides tillering.
Sowing
VYR: hybrid varieties in August, from 10 August. Population varieties 20 August–10 September. Sowing depth 2–3 cm. Too deep and tillering suffers. Have the parcel free preferably from mid-August.
Soil and parcel
Rye roots deeper than spring cereals, handles drought best among the cereals and cuts erosion on slopes (VYR). Direct drilling works best after pea and caraway.
Fertilising
The rate depends on the preceding crop and on hybrid versus population. It is in the VYR guide and is not reduced to one figure here.
Yield and harvest
Harvest often clashes with autumn sowing. Reserve the rye parcel in spring, not in the middle of harvest (VYR).
🔄 In the rotation
- Role
- A winter cereal that uses an early preceding crop and covers the soil through winter.
- Good preceding crop
- VYR: common preceding crops are pea, caraway, early barley or oat, oilseeds, ley, fallow, and also spring wheat and rye. Spring turnip rape is good in southern Finland, but a late autumn easily pushes rye sowing too late. Winter turnip rape fits better.
- Good following crop
- A spring cereal. Rye after rye is not the recommendation, even though it is sometimes sown (VYR notes the practice).
- Gap on the same parcel
- Reserve a parcel that is free in time. Do not rely on a late spring crop.
Other crops
Sources
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.