Mixed weather as wheat slowly ripens

The weather has been mixed over the past week in Down, but Neill was hoping to start cutting his winter wheat on Monday evening after a sample had tested at 17% moisture content.

The KWS Extase will be cut first. Neill isn’t expecting a huge yield due to the BYDV in the crop. He says that these patches have thinned out a lot and look poor. All wheaten straw will be baled.

The winter barley is fully finished.

All straw has been baled, with the crop yielding 10 round bales/ac, and fields have been cleared.

The SY Canyon averaged 4.3t/ac while the SY Armadillo came in at 3.7t/ac. These yields were at an average of 18% moisture content.

Neill is extremely happy and puts it down to excellent establishment. This year suited his dry land as the crop was never short on moisture. The grain quality was very good despite reduced sunlight this year. All 200ac of winter barley ground has been planted with 3kg/ha of Samson stubble turnips.

Neill says there is a lot of slug activity this year, but he doesn’t think slug pellets would pay for themselves on this crop.

The spring beans are starting to senesce and are about a month away from harvest. There are plenty of pods and it should be a decent crop. The maize has fully tasselled.

Neill hopes that the cobs can reach their full potential. He thinks that this will be harvested at the end of September. His maize harvest date has come forward in the past number of years due to the new bioplastic and earlier maturing varieties. This creates an ideal opportunity to plant winter wheat.

Neill recently applied to be a one-year pilot farm on the new Farming for Nature scheme in Northern Ireland, similar to ACRES.

However, this pilot scheme has now been cancelled, so Neill is hoping that the full scheme will be practical and straightforward for farmers despite the lack of pilots and farmer engagement.

The winter wheat is just coming ripe in Meath and Sam hopes to get it cut in the next few days. It looks like a promising crop and it is very uniform across the fields.

There are a few small green grains but it’s nothing to worry about.

Sam will bale all of this straw into large 8x4x3 bales to be used on the beef side of the farm.

With grass weeds a growing issue, the baler used on the farm is only used on one other farm by the contractor and machinery hygiene is taken very seriously.

The winter oilseed rape was harvested two weeks ago.

It delivered a good yield at 2t/ac over 97ac. The moisture content was at an average of 9.5%.

The straw was chopped under the Straw Incorporation Measure.

Sam will subsoil all of the tramlines due to the damage caused throughout the year during wet weather before lightly incorporating the chopped straw with a disc harrow.

Sam plans to plant winter wheat here in the autumn.

The spring barley has turned a lot in the past 10 days but it is still about 10 days away from harvest.

It has all remained standing which Sam puts down to reduced nitrogen applications this year. It looks like a very good crop despite the late planting.

The forage maize has loved the heat in the last two weeks and has now tasselled.

There are two cobs on most plants and the maize stands at over 6ft tall. Sam has been very impressed at how it has recovered from a poor start.

The min-till maize is behind, but it has come on very well in the past three weeks and Sam will be interested to see how it comes in on a yield, dry matter, feed quality and margin basis.

Harvesting is in full swing in Kilkenny on both the combinable crops and vegetable sides of the farm. The winter barley averaged 3t/ac or just a bit under it.

Tom says that it was the patches in the fields that didn’t survive the winter which brought the average down. All the straw was baled and the fields were then disced before Westerwold ryegrass was power harrowed in and rolled. Tom hopes to cut this for silage in the autumn and again in the spring.

One area of winter oats yielded between 3.5 and 3.7t/ac, while another was between 3 and 3.2t/ac. The oats had a very good KPH of 56.

The straw was baled and the land has been lightly cultivated.

The spring oats and barley are two to three weeks away from harvest. While the oats are still standing strong, there are a couple of lodged patches in the spring barley fields that were in carrots or potatoes last year.

Carrot harvesting began two weeks ago. Tom says it looks like a good crop but he won’t know the yields until a couple of full fields are finished.

The first of the potatoes are being harvested this week. These are Jazzy salad potatoes that were desiccated four weeks ago.

Tom is also on high alert for blight with high blight pressure this year. He says that the EU43 strain has been found on his farm again this year, which is quite concerning as it is resistant to some of the best chemicals on the market.

Testing

Tom says it is important to keep testing so that you know what strains you’re up against.

He says that since the UK has no cases of this strain so far, it most likely came from European seed potatoes which have been used since the supply of seed potatoes from Scotland halted due to Brexit.