A very unseasonal time: Generally at this time of year land would be too wet in much of the country to even think of ploughing, not to talk of planting.

That is not the case this year. Land seems quite dry, especially down in it, so opportunities to plant should be considered.

It might be good to have some work done because one of the consequences of a dry January could be a wet spring.

The vast majority of land is in great condition for ploughing once again and there are good opportunities to get lime spread and even slurry or manures applied and incorporated.

Sprayer retesting: One of the obligatory jobs that has caught up on us is the need to get sprayers which were tested originally in 2016 or even 2015 retested.

The certificates issued are only valid for five years and so they should really be renewed before the sprayers are used to apply products on crops this year.

The certification interval is complicated by the fact that all early certs had a lifespan of five years but this has been reduced to three years since 2020.

So a sprayer first tested in 2017 must be tested in 2022 but so must all sprayers tested initially in 2018 and 2019 because a certificate cannot last more than three years by the end of 2022. Retesting dates are shown in the table.

Managing canopy in rape: Winter rape will be the first crop to get N but any urgency is reduced by big crop canopies this year. Early N drives canopy production but the amount needed depends on how much canopy is in a crop at the start of spring growth.

The more canopy present, the less that needs to be produced using spring N and the higher the potential savings in N application.

Many crops have canopy sizes ranging from GAI 1.5 to GAI 3.5 already and this means considerable potential to save on N this year, unless crops are heavily grazed with pigeons over the next few weeks.

The GAI can be estimated by taking a photo of a representative area in your crop and putting it into the GAI assessment tool on an iPhone or in BASF’s Agri Centre website. Enter the date the photo was taken, give it a location (in the UK) and enter a normal or wide row spacing.

The tools will then calculate the GAI. This can then be used to calculate the amount of applied nitrogen necessary to take your crop to 3.5 GAI so that you do not produce excess canopy.

A strong 2.5 GAI canopy crop will only require 33kg of applied N in spring, assuming 30kg of mineral N in the soil, plus a further 60kg for grain fill and yield, so a total of 93kg N/ha for a crop that starts with a 2.5 GAI canopy. And some crops have even bigger canopies.