Hugh McDonnell

Bagenalstown, Co Carlow

There was some very nice weather in Carlow last week but 37mm of rain on Sunday morning has really softened the heavy parts of the farm according to Hugh.

He was trying to hold off on planting any winter cereals but he now thinks that some of his heavy land should have been planted before the rain arrived. Hugh says there’s nothing he can do about it now and just hopes that a dry spell will come in the next while to allow him to get the work done.

The winter wheat in this heavy land will be the first to be drilled if the soil conditions allow. Hugh is hoping to get LG Rebellion seed if it’s available. KWS Joyau will likely be the winter barley variety he will plant.

The hedge-cutting was finished up a couple of weeks ago and some of the land has been sprayed off. A few fields were cultivated to about 5” and rolled just as the rain arrived to get volunteers to germinate. Hugh is hoping to be able to go in and sow straight into this seedbed but it will depend on the soil conditions.

Hugh plans to apply pre-emergence herbicides on as many fields as he can. He says he will keep a close eye on the weather forecast in case there’s a possibility of heavy rain in the days after pre-emergence applications.

The cover crop of straight phacelia that Hugh planted isn’t doing too well.

He says it is quite small and is nearly getting smothered out by the volunteer cereals that germinated. The late sowing did not help but Hugh is still a bit disappointed by the cover crop.

Hugh was quite busy last week getting ready for a Teagasc Soil Health Week farm walk on his farm. You can read more from the event on this week’s tillage pages and on the Irish Farmers Journal website.

Patrick Daly

Ballinasloe, Co Galway

There has only been an occasional dry day in Galway since Patrick finished the spring barley harvest over three weeks ago. Nonetheless, this hasn’t stopped him from taking every opportunity to get work done in the fields.

Patrick applied slug pellets to the winter oilseed rape a while ago but there still seems to be some slug pressure around the field edges. Despite this, the crop seems to be getting up and away quite well with some warm temperatures over the past few weeks driving growth. Patrick says there is a good plant count so he is happy with how the crop has established. A pre-emergence herbicide was applied to the oilseed rape but Patrick says it will still need a graminicide and probably Astrokerb over the winter too to clear up volunteers and any more weeds that come through.

Patrick managed to get the spring beans harvested despite the broken weather. He was happy enough with the yield and the fact that the moisture content came in around 20.5% given that they were planted quite late and the poor weather over the past month.

The farm’s winter wheat was drilled before the rain fell at the weekend. Patrick always tries to get his winter crops in early as conditions can deteriorate very quickly in his part of the country.

He didn’t plough too far ahead of the sower in case the weather turned on him and is hoping for a dry spell in the next week or two to get his winter barley planted.

The area will be split between a two-row variety, Orcade, and a hybrid variety, SY Canyon.

Slurry is still going out on stubbles too whenever soil conditions allow Patrick to travel.

The last cut of silage was saved over the weekend without rain. Patrick notes that with this cut and the fact that the cattle are still out grazing, he should have enough fodder to see the farm through the winter.

Gary Gillespie

UCD Lyons Farm, Celbridge, Co Kildare

The past month has been a busy period on UCD Lyons Farm as all of the spring cereal plots were harvested and preparations were made for drilling winter cereal trials whenever the weather allows.

The spring cereals were all pretty late to ripen so every opportunity had to be taken between the showers to get them cut. Of the intercropping trial plots, the mixtures that contained peas at varying percentage levels yielded quite well and stayed standing, allowing for a relatively easy harvest in comparison to some other years.

The lab work on these intercrops is still being finalised to determine the effect that the hot and dry conditions during seed fill had on the protein content and other quality parameters of the different mixtures.

The spring oats have been harvested in the long-term establishment system trial. There were some noticeable visual differences between the different systems, with the plough and min-till plots appearing to yield better than the no-till plots due to poor establishment in the no-till plots.

This data is still being processed and the yield measurements will be compared to data from the soil scanning techniques that were carried out throughout the year to see if any patterns emerge. These plots are now being prepared to be sown with winter wheat.

In the teaching and demonstration plots, Gary noted that the hot and dry conditions seen during this year has led to some of the crops that never ripened in previous years coming in just in time to be put through a combine. These include the sunflowers and the chickpeas.

As far as Gary is aware, this will be the first time that a crop of chickpeas has been put through a combine in Ireland.

Gary highlights that with the warmer and drier conditions we have seen over the last number of years, there is potential for a number of these newer crops to become more commonplace in Ireland in time.