Stephen Wallace, Mountrath, Co Laois
Crops are not looking too bad in Laois and Stephen says this is the most he could expect this year.
The winter barley is filling away and Stephen has high hopes of a good yield. He expects the crop to be ripe around the normal time in the second half of July. He is currently hand-rogueing the barley for wild oats. He is breaking this job up into smaller parts and doing a bit every evening, so it doesn’t get too monotonous.
The winter oilseed rape that was sowed late has finished flowering. While some bare patches were resowed with spring barley to keep the weeds down, Stephen has been pleasantly surprised by the crop which looks so much better than in February.
Stephen applied the T3 fungicide of Prosaro and Amistar to his winter wheat over the weekend. He had to wait for the wind to die down before he could get out into the crop. There’s a small bit of septoria on leaf four, but that’s it.
The spring barley was also sprayed over the weekend. It got Nyviar, Serpent, Medax Max and trace elements. The crop got no aphicide and there’s a small bit of BYDV but Stephen says most of the yellowing in the crop is from waterlogging, which he expected given the fields the crop is in.
The winter rye is in grain fill. The crop is very tall, but the straw is strong. Stephen has no worries about lodging; there has been a lot of wind in the past week, but the rye is still standing tall.
The spring oats are beginning to head out and will get their last spray next week.
Stephen has got his self-built RTK base station working. It now needs a 24-hour survey and to connect to a casting service, but he should have it operational by next week.
Conor Callan, Ardee, Co Louth
An improvement in the weather allowed Conor to get back out with the sprayer in the early days of this week, but he still had to dodge the showers at times.
Most of this spraying was applying the T3 fungicide to winter wheat. This included Navaro, Augusta, N20 foliar nitrogen and Karate Zeon. Conor also went around the bare spots in the wheat with some Hurler herbicide before the wheat started to head out. He wanted to clear up some chickweed and not let it get out of hand when there was no competition.
The wheat is a mixed bag according to Conor. Some fields look very good, but other fields are middling, which Conor thinks is down to the weather. There is some septoria too, but it’s not too bad.
The winter barley has got better as the year has gone on even if yields will not be record-breaking. The crop is a decent height and quite thick, so Conor expects lots of straw. The last two weeks have slowed the crop’s progress and Conor says harvest will be in mid-July.
The maize looks pretty good. The earlier-sown fields are doing better as they really benefitted from the hot weather at the end of May.
The maize that was planted two weeks later was not established enough to make the most of it.
Conor says the crop would love a week of heat and sun soon. The bioplastic has mostly withered away now. He noted that the bioplastic seems to react differently in different fields and soils.
In some fields, the plastic was starting to go after three or four weeks, whereas in other fields it was still there five weeks after drilling.
Conor did a lot of reseeding just before the weather broke a few weeks ago, but the reseeds are struggling.
He says the volume of rain that has fallen since sowing and the cooler weather has really slowed progress down.
Shaun Diver, Tullamore Farm, Co Offaly
The ground is getting sticky in Tullamore after a lot of rain over the past few weeks. Shaun says it has been one of the worst years for weather he has seen so far and the crops are middling at present.
One field of the spring barley has gone very yellow, which Shaun thinks could be BYDV. This is despite the crop being sprayed for aphids with Markate 50 as it was planted in April.
Echo Pro and Boudha were applied to tidy up the weeds in the crop and some trace elements were included too.
Apart from being a bit yellow, the crop is nice and thick. It will be due its T1 fungicide spray in the next few days whenever the weather allows.
All fertiliser has been applied to the crop. It received 3.5 bags/ac of 10-10-20 at sowing and was top-dressed with 1.5 bags/ac of CAN.
The combi-crop has gone a bit yellow too, but it’s not too bad. It’s growing up nicely and the peas are doing well in it. Shaun says there should be a nice crop on it by the time it comes to harvest.
Shaun reseeded where the forage rye was previously on 15 May. While germination has been quite good and uniform, it is now just sitting there and is still only getting green as growth has been very slow.
The reseeds have not been top-dressed yet, but Shaun will probably look at doing this over the next week too.
He explains that he had seen the same thing where he took out surplus bales and topped paddocks; the grass is very slow to come back in them.
The first-cut silage was finished up on Monday after being cut on Saturday.
Shaun reports that it was in super order and there was a great crop on it.
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