As we head into the backend of the year, farmers should begin to focus on improving or maintaining the soil fertility of their farms.
Paddocks or fields that are underperforming need to be looked at, to firstly determine what is causing the issue and secondly, to fix it.
Correcting soil fertility is a long-term project. It could potentially take a number of years to get paddocks or fields to the ideal level of fertility.
Some of the paddocks that should be high on the list for soil sampling are ones that are consistently growing less grass than the others.
Unless there is known reason for this, i.e. it used to hold cows before they cross a road, it needs to be looked at.
Other paddocks would include those that you are looking to incorporate clover into, as soil fertility needs it to be at a high level for it to establish and remain in the sward.
Soil fertility
The first thing that needs to be done is the taking of soil samples to determine what is needed by paddocks to correct fertility issues.
For most farms, soil samples cannot be taken at this time of the year, but farmers should be consulting with their advisor on the fields or paddocks that require them.
Farmers can also start developing a plan for the paddocks that have recent soil samples and begin the process of improving and maintaining soil fertility on-farm.
It is going to be an ongoing process for most farms so farmers should start with any paddocks that they have soil samples for and then focus on getting samples from the remaining paddocks this winter.
A plan should then be developed to improve fertility of the soils on the farm and then maintain them moving forward.
What is important to highlight is that farmers should continually maintain the fertility of the soils on their farm; there is no point correcting it now and then not maintaining it.
Benefits
There are also significant savings to be made by ensuring that soil fertility is correct in your fields.
Having fields with high levels of fertility increases the effectiveness of chemical fertilisers that are spread.
So you could actually spread less chemical nitrogen and grow the same amount of grass if the soil fertility is correct.