With the seasons changing hands, Conor Kehoe went to farmers around Leinster to see where they're at.

And, no doubt about it, there are plenty jobs to be done.

The past month has been busy for Stephen, as the harvest came to a close and winter oilseed rape was planted.

There were only three weeks between the harvesting of the winter oilseed rape and the planting of the crop for next year’s harvest. This was Stephen’s first harvest of oilseed rape and it went very well. He fitted an electric-driven side-knife to the combine, and the crop was threshed without issue. There seemed to be a low level of losses, even though he did not have a header extension. The crop yielded between 1.6 and 1.7t/ac at 9% moisture, which Stephen was very happy with, considering how the crop looked back in February.

There were a lot of wild oats in the crop. Stephen had not applied a graminicide; he thought he would be ploughing the crop back in as it looked so bad over the winter. He says he will have to keep a close eye on the oats, but there should be plenty of control options in the following winter wheat.

Pleasant surprise

Stephen planted 19ac of LG Avenger last week. It got 4,500 gallons/ac of digestate before ploughing and a pre-emergence herbicide of Katamaran Turbo was applied.

The spring barley did “surprisingly OK”, according to Stephen. It was on marginal ground and while the yield varied between fields, the average came in at 2.6t/ac.

Unfortunately, the spring oats were very disappointing, yielding just over 2t/ac. They were sown in early April, but Stephen says they suffered some surface capping after sowing and never really recovered. However, there were only a few acres of the crop, so it’s not a huge deal.

Stephen has decided to try to get all of his land planted to winter crops this year. Therefore, he only has a small area planted to cover crops, a mix of vetch and phacelia for the Farming for Water EIP. He hopes to get his winter rye planted in the coming week.

There has been a bit of rain over the past few weeks in Louth and the grass is growing again, but Conor says the ground is still quite dry and more rain will be needed to correct the soil-moisture deficit.

The first of the maize will be ready to be cut in about a week. The grain is not quite hard enough yet, but it’s getting there. The later-sown maize is still about three weeks away. The grains are still very soft, but they are filling nicely and Conor is hopeful of a good yield. In any case, he says there is no panic, and if the ground stays dry, there should be no issues at harvest.

Conor notes the drought has definitely not had the same effect on the maize as it did on the winter barley and wheat. The deep maize roots seemed to be able to access deeper moisture and keep the crop going.

Plenty to keep busy

All of the cereal stubbles have been cultivated in the past month to create stale seedbeds. The volunteers that appear will then be sprayed off before winter planting. Conor had moved away from using glyphosate before ploughing a few years ago, but found that fields were starting to get dirtier after crop emergence, so he has returned to the herbicide.

Dung has been applied to some fields and there is still more to go out before ploughing. There will be winter barley and wheat once more on the farm, while Conor is debating putting in some winter oats too, but he is not sure yet. He has spent the last week reseeding grassland.

All land is usually ploughed before reseeding, but the land being reseeded at the moment has a lot of shale, so he is going straight in with an Alpego Inversa. It’s leaving a very nice finish, according to Conor.

The rain has returned to Tullamore Farm, but the grass is slow enough to get going, especially where it was badly burnt. Demand is still high too, so it’s difficult to build up covers.

The spring barley was harvested in August and Shaun was quite happy with it, given the weather over the growing season. It averaged 2.8t/ac at 16.7% moisture and 64KPH.

The field out of ley yielded 2.5t/ac, while the land after the combi-crop and forage rye did 3.4t/ac. The lower-yielding crop was sown a week earlier, but it was in a wetter, colder field and the crop never seemed to kick on during the year.

Good conditions

The conditions were great to get all the straw cleared before the rain arrived. The better-yielding crop did 10 bales/ac, while the other did seven bales/ac. Shaun says they were well-packed bales, so he is happy enough.

Shaun planted forage rape at 4kg/ha after the wholecropped combi-crop about two weeks ago. The ground was disced twice before the seed was mixed with 10-10-20 and spread with a fertiliser spreader to keep costs down. Unfortunately, the rain then arrived and Shaun did not get to roll the crop.

When it had dried out and Shaun came back to the field three days later, the forage rape had already germinated, so he did not roll it in case he damaged the seedlings. Bales are fed out alongside the forage rape and Shaun plans to leave them in the field while the ground is still hard, ready to be used.

He wants to do it before the ground gets too soft, as there was a good bit of soil damage and hardship involved in bringing the bales out as they were needed last year.

He wants to plant forage rye after the spring barley in the next couple of weeks. He hopes to sow this directly into the stubble, as the ground has now softened up sufficiently.