Crops catch up despite late start

In the end, it was summer rather than spring that pushed away the prolonged winter. For most people, the average planting dates for spring crops were much later than anything that most experienced in their lifetime so far. Now, we must hope that nature does its bit to compensate for the late planting – it did last year but this year is an even bigger ask.

The past two weeks have brought many reports of the greatest risk associated with late planting – dry, crumbly seed beds and uneven crop establishment and early growth. Where these problems are evident is directly proportional to the amount of rainfall since planting. Those that got occasional showers have lovely full crops, while some fields that got little or no rain have suffered.

Recent rain may bring some relief but once a spring crop suffers, the consequences tend to be permanent. As I travel around I can see spring crops that are still only emerging; others have two to three leaves, while the most forward crops are gone into stem extension with at least one clear node already visible on the most forward plants.

Many crops seem excellent and look as though they could make up for the late planting. But there are many problems to be seen also.

Uneven establishment is the most common one, with thin patches commonly seen on brows and on the sides of hills. But the frequent abuse taken by headlands is also showing up as very uneven, patchy and poor establishment. This problem is not confined to spring crops and very many winter crops have also suffered the same problem.

The other problem that is evident in spring crops is plant discolouration. This is generally only visible in patches as it is difficult to see any real symptom on the individual plant. But it is most likely a nutrition issue, perhaps only an availability issue in drier parts of the field. This could be a result of any of a number of nutrients when the soil gets dry, particularly if the fertiliser is higher up in the seedbed.

Headland damage is common on both winter and spring crops.

In most instances, rain will cure the problem but it is important to remember that when a plant is off colour, its yield potential is being hit. So you cannot afford to look at a crop in this state and it may well be sensible to apply one of the many plant boost products on the market, which contain bits of the main major and minor nutrients.

While the level of nutrients may be small, they may be adequate to push root growth into new areas of the soil to help drive further growth.

One crop I passed by last weekend had quite a big patch of very pale plants in the middle of the field in a saucer. This was pale, not yellow, and so may not be a nutrient problem. But it is definitely stress of some sort and again if it allowed to continue it will leave its mark on yield.

The only other general comment I can make is that it seems likely that both maize and fodder beet areas are significantly increased, possibly by more than 50% each, because these crops are so apparent as one drives though the country.

Early crops in south Tipp

The previous comments are general comments from crops around the country. The following comments are specifically from crops that I visited recently in the south Tipperary area. As stated previously, there is a lot of maize and beet being grown in this mixed farming county but there is also much more winter oilseed rape than I had expected to see.

Winter barley

There is a lot of winter barley in this region. Crops are not all equally good though, if general appearance and the variability in height are indicators. There are many smashing looking crops that appear to be as good as they look with good ear counts and foliage clean to the ground. All crops are at various stages of flowering to the start of grain fill as we head into June – little or nothing later than normal for much of the country.

One of the crops I walked into was at mid- to late flowering. This was a good crop with good density but it had a lot of sprawling mildew present on its leaves. It was largely free of weeds but there were a few wild oats, groundsel and ryegrass plants present. There was also a little bit of rhyncho in this crop with an amount of those big eye-shaped lesions that we think may be septoria nodorum on barley. The headlands in this crop are suffering from the problems of this and previous years.

Another crop of barley was largely similar in growth stage but there was virtually no disease of any sort evident and neither were there any weeds.

Winter oats

There were some big blocks of oats about at various stages of earing out. The first crop I walked into was just starting to ear out. What struck me most about this crop was where the ears were emerging from. They seemed to be almost halfway down a particularly short crop canopy, indicating that the crop had been hit hard with growth regulator. The canopy above the emerging ears was the flag leaf.

This crop looked very healthy with little or no lesions on the leaves or stems.

There had been a lot of weeds in this crop but that had been sprayed off and were still dying back. But it seemed that would all be controlled.

A second crop I walked into was almost fully eared out with the bulk of the spikelets now visible above the flag leaf. This was a good thick crop where there was visible evidence of tillers drying off, something that John Finnan of Teagasc spoke about at last January’s tillage conference.

This crop did not look to be heavily fertilised, or at least it did not show it. There were a lot of blotches on the older leaves which are impossible to categorise.

Winter oilseed rape

As indicated previously, there seemed to be a lot of winter rape crops about. These were at various stages of the end of flowering but very few crops were uniform in this regard. Many fields were largely out of flower but with some patches of headlands and an occasional crop still in almost full flower.

The crops themselves seemed solid. There was a reasonable depth of pods with relatively few aborted or blank pods. One of the crops showed signs of lesions on the stem but it was too early to indicate if this is light leaf spot or sclerotinia.

Spring barley

As with other parts of the country, spring barley crops varied from the three-leaf stage into first node and beyond.

There was a significant amount of growth variability within the crops I visited and the headlands had already suffered badly.

One of the crops I walked into was at a strong GS31 and up on 25cm tall at the highest points. But much of the rest of the crop was less than 15cm high, as it was showing largely prostrate growth to fill in the patches with lower density.

Disease wise, the crop was still perfectly clean. There had been a lot of weeds present but these had been sprayed off a while ago and all weeds looked like they were dying. The main weeds present were knotgrass and red dead nettle with some chickweed, speedwell and milk thistles.

There were a few plants infected with BYDV but very few.

Winter wheat

There were a lot of good-looking winter wheat crops about. Most were clean but there was certainly some septoria about. The crops I visited were at strong booting stage and ears were about to either burst through the sheaths or pop up through the collar.

This crop was not particularly dense and a lot of it did not have a lush green colour. There was definite septoria on leaf four but the top three leaves were free of disease thus far.

However, there was some tipping evident in the crop and a wee bit of second leaf damage, possibly caused by a dropping sprayer.

There were a good few slugs up on the canopy leaving very visible striping.