Larry Doyle

Larry Doyle spraying Firebird (0.3l/ha) as a pre-emergence herbicide on winter barley.

Bushertown, Co Carlow

Rainfall amounts have been small in Busherstown over the past few weeks meaning that sowing conditions have been ideal. Blue skies and sunshine have made it hard to resist the temptation to sow early however, explains Larry.

Nevertheless Larry waited to start sowing winter barley until 2 October after having started ploughing the previous day. Larry generally delays burning off his stubble ground until later in the season to prevent regrowth. He also doesn’t plough far ahead from the drill in autumn to prevent weeds from getting a chance to germinate.

He ploughs with a Kverneland five-furrow mouldboard with number 28 boards at 20 inches. The number 28 boards allows him to plough with 710 tractor tyres.

Stones are gathered with a rear mounted stone rake before the ground in cultivated with a 6m Rexius roller.

There’s still plenty of warmth in the ground explains Larry. He’s sowing his winter barley slightly deeper in order delay emergence with his 3m Vaderstad Rapid drill.

Variety choice

This year he’s sowing Tower and Belfry winter barley. Tower has performed well on his farm in the past although the variety is slipping in net blotch control. He’s growing Belfry hybrid six-row barley for the second time on his farm.

“It was between Bazooka and Belfry, there’s not much between them but Belfry seems to have shorter straw.”

Larry is sowing Tower at 330 seeds/m2 (190kg/ha) with a TGW of 58g. He’s sowing Belfry barley at 190 seeds/m2 (90kg/ha) with a TGW of 48g. All seed is treated with Redigo Deter.

He plans to start sowing Bennington winter wheat this week at around 310 seeds/m2 (160kg) with a TGW of 48. He chose this variety largely due to its good disease resistance and yield rating.

“It scores a six for septoria resistance but we might have to watch for sprouting.”

He may also secure a small amount of Graham seed. Next, he’ll move into Barra gluten-free oats for Glanbia in a couple of weeks.

“We don’t need high volumes of rain but some showers might help the ground to cool down a bit and stop the crops getting ahead of themselves”.

John C Byrne

Clonmel, Co Tipperary

John C Byrne ploughing ahead of winter barley planting in excellent ground conditions.

Following storm Ali, weather once again settled in Clonmel and sowing conditions can only be described as ideal over the past few weeks.

Sowing began last Wednesday week. John finished sowing winter barley last Friday and sowed one-third Belfry at 100kg/ha, one-third Bazooka at 100kg/ha and one-third Pixel at 170kg/ha. All barley seed was treated with Latitude and Redigo Deter. He plans to sow oats this week and will move onto winter wheat after.

The challenges of now

In conversation, John stated that he sees three major challenges facing the industry. “When Redigo Deter goes, so does early sowing of corn. If chlorothalonil goes it will be a game changer in septoria and ramularia control and if glyphosate goes, we’ll have to go back to the chisel plough,” he remarks.

John recalls when glyphosate first made its way to the market as a young man. Prior to this, stubble cultivations using chisel ploughs and tine harrows in the spring and ploughing were the only real methods of grassweed control.

“You had to pull up the rhizomes of the scutch grass using harrows in order to control it. We had a few other chemical options but they were awful things,” explains John.

Once glyphosate made its way the market, growers had an effective way of controlling scutch grass and winter crop area increased. If glyphosate goes it’ll be back to the plough according to John.

“If round up goes, modern day min-till systems won’t work, it’ll be back to the plough.”

John recalls the value of his grain when he first started farming in the mid-70s. “When I first started farming, 1t of grain went from £40-60/t.”

John continued: “In real terms, grain was much more valuable back then, cost of inputs were under the price of 1t of grain. If you were farming 300ac you were doing very well.”

Nowadays when you have to farm 500-600ac to make the average industrial wage that says it all he explains.

“Some positive news we got recently was a green price of €205/t. It’s a good price for growers and we should be receiving close to this every year.”

Jamie Rankin

Cloon, Co Donegal

Generally speaking, the weather has been good in Donegal over the past few weeks explains Jamie. Rainfall amounts for September were below average and ground conditions are excellent for his main crop potato harvest and autumn cereal drilling.

Things are busy on Jamie’s farm as he juggles autumn sowing with his main crop potato harvest which is around 25% complete. “It’s just a matter of getting through work at the moment, potatoes are number one,” says Jamie.

His potato crops have been slower than normal to reach maturity this year despite the cooler temperatures. Quality is reasonably good but there is some scab present in crops, particularly those that weren’t irrigated. With high tuber numbers this year, crops have been slow to bulk but with more than adequate moisture levels in the soil, achieving dry matter levels hasn’t been an issue. Jamie windrows every second pair of drills using a Scanstone Osprey windrower before lifting into boxes with a Grimme Varitron 220 self-propelled potato harvester. He aims to lift 15ac/day.

His Gemson salad potatoes were the first to be lifted this year for store. Quality was great but surprisingly tuber numbers were below target. “We target around 1m tubers per hectare but I would say they were closer to 850,000 tubers/ha,” says Jamie. He then moved onto a non-irrigated Maris Piper crop but scab levels were higher than desired. Last Saturday he moved onto the first of his Rooster for storage. We caught up with Jamie in the field during the harvest. The video can be watched online.

Cereal harvest complete

Jamie’s cereal harvest is now complete. His spring barley averaged 3.27t/ac when dried to 14%. Average spring barley straw yields came in at six 4x4 bales/ac.

Emergence of his winter oilseed rape is high and the crops will receive an application of Claw (1.5l/ha) this week. Autumn sowing began last Thursday and was largely complete in a matter of days due to excellent conditions. His Tower and Cassia winter barley were sown at 300 seeds/m2 and his Costello winter wheat at 280 seeds/m2.

“I’m happy with my potato yields so far but they’re likely to be more variable as the harvest goes on”.

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