Last week we caught up with Kildare From the Tramlines farmer Andrew Bergin. Like most tillage farmers, spring cereal planting has now drawn to a close.

Andrew was sowing the last of his Limona seed spring barley crop just outside Newbridge when we visited him.

The crop was sown at 180kg/ha and the seed had a TGW of 48g. He is aiming for a plant stand of around 300 plants/m2.

Ground conditions at the time of planting were very dry, so a small amount of moisture will not do the crop or the ground any harm.

Sowing

He uses Horsch Simba 4Co and Fendt 818 to drill directly into the ground. The air seeder is equipped with tines and can drill at reasonably high speeds.

However, as reported previously, trash can sometimes build up on the tines, which was a particular problem in 2018.

Before sowing, he broadcast around 200kg/ha of 10:10:20 on to the seed bed.

He then applied 80l/ha of 7:8:1 liquid starter fertiliser into seedbed when sowing. The field will be rolled after sowing.

Read all about Andrews’s spring sowing campaign in this week's From the Tramlines.

Watch the video below

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