BETTER farms up to date with inputs

It has been a busy few weeks on the three Teagasc Tillage BETTER farms, just like every other farm around the country. Crops grew rapidly over the last few weeks so timing of input applications has been critical. Some critical decisions have been made on crops and the results of these will only be known when the combines come in from the fields. Rain last weekend was very welcome in some areas, especially in north Duiblin where low rainfall levels in April and May left some crops under pressure.

Kevin is up to date with all crop work. Flag leaf sprays (T2) on winter wheat went on in good conditions and with little septoria evident in the crops. There is little doubt that waiting till leaf-three was fully emerged and the dry weather around the T1 timing has helped keep septoria levels down. That said, all the recent rain has helped crops greatly.

Winter barley has finished flowering and crops in the Carlow area are looking particularly good. Kevin thinks that winter barley has great potential this year and is happy with his earlier decision to plant a larger area.

The only issue that is concerning him is uneven awn emergence in one field. This was traced back to planting where the outer coulters on the wings of a new drill planted seeds deeper than those in the centre. These areas have been marked and ear counts will be carried out to see if there is a yield effect.

Kevin used liquid N (UAN) as a trial on all his winter barley this year. Excluding the N in the compound, all other N was applied in liquid form to examine the convenience, performance and reliability of the product. So far, the product has worked well with no scorching, except on the odd overlap. Kevin, however, is keen to highlight the advantages that he has seen from the point of view of accuracy, timing and speed of uptake and he sees it as a very versatile product.

Liquid N will also facilitate the use of wider tramlines. Kevin reckons that it could be difficult to get traditional fertiliser to spread accuratley to 36m but this would not be a problem with the liquid. The plan at the moment is to move to liquid nitrogen on all the crops next year as Kevin is very happy with how it has worked out on the barley this year.

Winter wheat received its flag leaf spray (T2) on 10 May with flag leaves fully emerged. This was exactly three weeks after the leaf-three spray (T1) application when the third-last leaf was fully emerged. John has seen some septoria on leaf four but it is at relatively low levels. Again the combination of dry weather and accurate timings are helping to keep it at bay.

Winter barley has finished flowering and looks good, if slightly tall. This is especially the case with the six-row varieties even though they all received their PGR. It remains to be seen if this has any effect on lodging – fingers crossed.

Oilseed rape has finished flowering and pods look to be filling well at the moment. John reckons that crops are ahead of schedule and it looks like there will be an early harvest this year.

Spring barley is a new venture this year and John completed the top dressing of nitrogen using the YARA N-Sensor. The barley ground received poultry manure, as did his spring oats, so the N-Sensor is used to establish how much nitrogen the crops required.

John is anxious that the crops don’t lodge and he feels that the sensor has helped him in this regard over the years. However, he was surprised by how little CAN was applied on these crops but, having trusted the sensor in previous years, he was not tempted to put on more than the technology calculated. He has decided not to use a PGR on the spring barley because of this.

In general, John is happy with how his crops are performing thus far. The only worry he has at the moment is the price of cereals. He is concerned that, at current grain prices and the cost of inputs, tillage farming is hardly sustainable.

Only 10mm of rain in April, followed by 20mm up to 25 May, left crops under huge pressure in north Dublin according to Derek Keeling. So the rain over the weekend was very welcome. Before that large cracks could be seen in fields, and these led to even more moisture loss out of the ground.

Some continuous wheat crops were under pressure and lighter areas of fields, or areas susceptible to take-all, were starting to appear even though these crops were Lattitude dressed.

Some foliar N was applied to these areas to see if it will give a response. Derek felt it was pointless to put on CAN in the dry conditions as it could just sit on the dry ground for too long.

Top-dressing with nitrogen on the wheat was completed just before the flag emerged. The flag leaf spray (T2) was completed on 26 May with most crops looking quite clean.

A number of plant tissue samples were taken by Mark Plunkett of Teagasc to see if there were differences within crops. This was done because Derek had identified parts of fields where variability was evident. Manganese and zinc were identified in some zones within the wheat crop and these areas will be treated with foliar applications.

Derek resisted the temptation to apply these with the fungicides as he was afraid that the crops were already under enough stress and he didn’t want to risk causing scorch. These areas will be treated with a separate application.

Tillers

Spring wheat was a little thinner than he would like and this has received a PGR, along with a mildewicide and herbicide, to try to encourage tillers.

Liquid potash was applied to some of the winter barley with the final fungicide to see if there is any benefit from a brackling point of view. Crops have good potential and it would be a pity to lose some of the heads on the ground.