Winter barley begins to turn as weather improves

The cold wind continues to blow in Tipperary as Pa prepares for harvest. The KWS Joyau winter barley is beginning to turn and Pa says it is about three weeks away from harvest. The two-row varieties are about a week behind this.

The winter oats are also filling nicely, and the Elatus Era applied as the last fungicide is keeping the crop clean.

The winter wheat received its T3 flowering spray on 7 June. This consisted of Oraso (1l/ha), Azoshy (0.5l/ha) and trace elements.

The wheat looks good, but Pa says that the septoria pressure has been very high.

Since the crop was planted early at the beginning of October, it has been quite hard to keep the leaves clean. While the flag leaf is fully clean, there is septoria further down in the crop.

The winter oilseed rape looks quite heavy, and Pa hopes it keeps standing. He says it is a bit shorter than other years, which should help it. There are lots of pods and Pa hopes that it reaches its full potential.

The March-sown spring oats have headed out. It received Velogy Era (0.95l/ha) as its final spray. Pa says the crop looks good, and has coped very well on wet headlands and in places where it was planted into less than ideal conditions.

The spring barley has not done as well on wet headlands, where it is struggling.

However, there is a great crop on the middle of the fields.

While BYDV is minimal in early-sown crops, there is more of it in the later-drilled fields, but it should still be a small percentage which should not affect yield. The barley will receive its final spray this week as the awns emerge.

The barley remains very clean, but it is shorter than usual, which will lead to less straw. Pa says that he has had a number of calls and orders for straw already, which have come in earlier than usual this year.

Conall has been very busy with silage and slurry the past couple of weeks, with a lot of slurry still in storage as there was very little spread in the spring.

A small portion of the winter barley lodged last week, but this is an area which did not receive any Terpal, so Conall is not surprised. The rest of the barley is standing well.

The KWS Joyau should be ready to harvest in three weeks, which is around the typical harvest date, but over a week later than last year, when harvest begun unusually early on 1 July.

The winter oats look good and are well into grain fill. Conall says it is hard to know how they will yield and the combine will tell the final story.

Conall applied the second and final fungicide to the spring beans at the weekend. This consisted of Signum at 0.8kg/ha and trace elements.

Conall doesn’t apply a third fungicide, as he does not want the crop to remain very green and subsequently be harvested too late into the year, especially with his heavy land.

The crop has remained quite clean despite the wet weather.

The awns are emerging on the spring barley, so Conall applied Elatus Era (0.8l/ha), folpet (1.5l/ha), and mancozin (0.7l/ha) at the weekend. The barley had already received Terpal at 0.75l/ha just as the flag leaf began to emerge. There is a lot of BYDV in the barley, but it is confined to individual leaves, so it should not have too much of an effect on yield.

The crop has remained green, with no yellowing on any headlands and looks otherwise clean and healthy.

The spring oats are also into stem extension. Conall applied the first fungicide two weeks ago. This contained Midas (0.3l/ha), CeCeCe 750 (1l/ha), Proline (0.6l/ha) and Amistar (0.8l/ha).

Alex has been busy with first-cut silage and reseeding in the past few weeks while also keeping on top of spray timings on his crops.

The winter barley looks reasonably good.

The KWS Joyau is a bit ahead of the two rows, but it seems to be holding its colour well and seems quite a bit heavier than the two rows.

The winter wheat will receive its head spray this week. Alex is happy with the crop so far, and it is relatively clean considering the rain.

It won’t be a record yield, but Alex is hopeful of a decent return.

The organic winter oats look very good except for some headlands and areas under trees that are a bit poorer. It will probably be ready for harvest at the same time as the winter barley.

The spring beans are mixed, with fields where dung or slurry were applied pre-ploughing looking a good bit better. They have not quite reached flowering yet.

Some of the spring barley received a herbicide of Hurler and Calibre Max SX last week, with the remaining fields to be sprayed with this mix this week.

The early-sown organic spring oats look quite well, but the later-sown fields have a lot of catching up to do. The cold weather has given weeds the opportunity to compete with the oats, which would usually smother the weeds if there was a burst of growth.

The maize is also coming under pressure with the cold weather.

The crop has gone yellow, but Alex says that it looks better than crops grown without plastic. Alex sees the investment in plastic as an insurance policy.

The spring oilseed rape was very slow at emerging in the cold weather, but has recovered in the past week. The plants seem to be all there, but it looks like harvest will be very late.

Alex finished up planting with a small area of peas and barley, which at this stage are probably destined for wholecropping.