March beckons and tillage farmers will be keen to kick-on with the management priorities associated with winter cereal crops, planted out last autumn.
However, it remains a case of waiting for weather and ground conditions to improve.
Teagasc is confirming that many winter cereal crops are starting to ‘green-up’. So what are the agronomy-related priorities that growers should be prioritising, where winter wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape are concerned?
According to tillage specialist, Shay Phelan, winter oilseed crops are looking quite good at the moment.
“But the first thing that growers should do is carry out a green area index assessment of their crops,” he said.
“This can be done using an app that can be drawn down onto a mobile phone. This allows farmers to carry out the required canopy management assessments.
“Based on the results achieved from this process, growers can work out how must nitrogen they actually need to apply.”
Decisions for tillage farmers
But oilseed rape aside, there are many tough decisions that will need to be taken on tillage farms over the coming weeks, regarding other crops.
Poor or very patchy fields predominate in many areas across the country at the present time.
“There’s huge variation in crops across the country right now. From the Teagasc survey that was carried out at the beginning of the year, we know that the vast majority of crops planted last autumn went in on the back of a plough-based system,” Phelan continued.
“But we also know that less half of those growers using a plough-based system had met their autumn planting target.
“Those farmers using min-till and direct-drill systems are probably that little bit ahead. This is because they were able to drill crops that little bit earlier.
“However, many growers who wanted to use min-till in September and October were prevented from doing so because of the bad weather and poor ground conditions.
“They then opted for the plough as the planting season progressed,” he explained.
When it comes to the issue of having to replant cereal crops over the coming weeks, Teagasc is reporting very wide geographic spread.
“The figure could be in the region of 15% in Cork and Waterford,” Shay Phelan confirmed.
“But in the north-east we could be talking as high as 25%. This is where min-till systems were used. In cases where the plough was used, this figure drops down to around 5%.
“But whatever the planting system chosen, it was the deluge of rain followed in the days that directly followed drilling that caused most of the damage.
“Last autumn was characterised by very short planting windows, followed by prolonged spells of very heavy rain,” he concluded.