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We sow all maize under contract for a biodigester. Eighty per cent was sown in good conditions with 10% in average and the last 10% in poor conditions, but it’s all sown now since last week. With the winter wheat, 5% may be lost to wet areas of the field and flooding. I’m hopeful that the late spring will increase grains per ear.
We are split 80% winter and 20% spring crops this year, which was not the plan. Everything is sown. Potatoes are also grown and we are about to start these. We are three weeks behind on last year for sowing potatoes but ground conditions have been so poor we cannot operate. There will be roughly two acres left fallow this year as it is too wet to work with.
We are broken up into 90% winter and 10% spring crops. We have 100% of the spring crops sown but we are still two weeks later sowing than what we were last year. We are up to date on our fertiliser and spraying as best as possible.
This is the worst winter followed by the worst spring. We grow spring barley as a rotation between the vegetables. We are 50% through our planting of vegetables, including carrots. We will sow spring barley in May as we need to rotate. The window for working is so small and I’ve been forced to pull out of fields because ground conditions are so poor.
The farm is split 75% winter and 25% spring crops. The last few days have seen a big improvement and we should have 60% of the crops sown. We have never sown as much in April and we have had to sow in poor conditions.
Our heavy ground will be planted to maize as we could not get spring barley sown. We have sown more today than we have in the last two weeks as ground temperatures have increased considerably.
We will have 100% sown by the middle of this week. Two-thirds of the farm is in winter crops and the remaining third in spring crops. We are behind on our sowing dates from last year. We should have more spring oats but we changed to spring barley. We are up to date with fertiliser application and roughly 10 days behind on spraying. Potato sowing should begin in the next 10 days as soil temperatures aren’t too bad up here.
The broken weather pattern since last harvest still exists and we haven’t been able to get three dry days together. Ground is slow to dry out and crops have been sown in less than ideal conditions, with less than 30% of the spring sowings completed in south Cork. Spring beans and spring wheat have been abandoned so choices for growers are spring barley, beet and maize. I have winter barley and spring oats sown.
This has been the worst spring I have ever seen. We still have no spring crops sown. With 107ml of rain in April, and over 480ml of rain in the first quarter of the year, we have not been able to get out. Land is saturated and field work has been impossible so far. I grow 67% winter crops and 33% spring. Winter crops looked to have established well but we won’t know for sure until we harvest them. As tough as this spring has been, no ground will be left fallow. All ground will be utilised whether this means making wholecrop or not.
I am currently up to date with all my spring sowing. We have completed about 90% of the work so far. We haven’t made any changes to crop choices here as we always have a mix of crops, so the three-crop rule derogation doesn’t affect us.
As of now, we have virtually nothing sown. It’s been a never-ending run of bad weather since the end of harvest time last year up until now – I have never seen anything like it. The three-crop rule doesn’t affect us as we always have a good variety of crops. My crop choices have slightly changed – it’s gone too late to get beans in to the ground so we will sow wheat as an alternative.
We are finished all the spring sowing, thankfully I have a good team of lads behind me and we managed to get all crops into the ground. I had no winter crops. I have land that was ploughed last backend intended for sowing grass in but I was unable get into the fields once the bad weather came. This has definitely been the most difficult spring in memory – it’s been never-ending.
I am just finished sowing my spring crops. We grow 50% winter and 50% spring crops. The three-crop rule derogation had no effect on my cropping plans as I always sow a mixture of crops anyway. Winter crops have grown steady, but in recent weeks have been maturing through growth stages extremely fast, I don’t yet know what kind of an impact this will have.
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