Rain continues to halt progress

This time last year, a few people were getting ready to plant. This year, it seems like it might even be risky to order seed – a bit like buying green bananas when you are getting on a bit.

Still, it’s winter – better to have the rain falling now. It will pick up; it always does. So there is little choice but to be prepared for when the window for work opens up.

Rainfall amounts continue to be variable. The extremes of wet can be found between the Phoenix Park at 73mm for January so far and Newport at 244mm. But, as has been the case recently, the eastern seaboard is generally getting considerably less rain than areas further west and north.

Be ready with fertiliser: We are now in February so it’s fertiliser time again as growth is possible in the coming weeks. However, there should be no major rush on this until ground conditions and weather pick up a bit. Growth means that some nutrients will be needed but there will be very little required for a few weeks yet.

Application is very much a matter of judging timing against signs of visible growth and weather prospects. Urgency is influenced by where you are, crop condition, ability to travel and the likelihood of growth or heavy rain. The more advanced the crop the greater the need for some early nitrogen. But some is more like 5kg than 50kg N/ha and it is very difficult to get so little applied to keep things ticking over.

Winter rape and barley

Winter rape is the most urgent crop for N, followed by winter barley. Rape needs early nitrogen to drive canopy growth but the amount depends on the amount of canopy already present. Canopy could vary from very little following late planting or pigeon grazing up to GAI 2.5 where a crop was sown early.

If you have a smartphone and you take a photo of a crop you can upload that picture to www.agricentre.basf.co.uk/agroportal/uk/en/services_1/website_tools/osr_gai_online/osr_gai_online.html

This will give you the GAI of the photo in question. This can then be used to calculate the early nitrogen requirement to drive the required canopy production. The higher the canopy reading, the less early N is needed to produce the target GAI of 3.5.

This needs to be calculated a number of times for each crop. Roughly 120-140 kgN/ha is required to get from GAI 2 to 3.5 or 170 kgN/ha to get from 1.5 GAI.

Winter barley crops may also benefit from a little early N to help maintain maximum yield potential. This helps prevent leaf and tiller loss which can reduce potential yield. Growth in the absence of nutrients will mean that plants scavenge on themselves to feed new growth – this is what causes crops to go yellow. As little as 5-10 kgN/ha is enough early with more later as growth rates increase.

Soil testing

Get any remaining tests taken and analysed ASAP. It will not be long until you need this information to guide P and K application, and possibly even lime.