Farmer Writes: the black arts of crop nutrition and TAMS uncertainty

It’s that time of year when you’re chomping at the bit to get out on the fields, but are stuck wading through paperwork and plans for the season.

February and early-March are always tricky for me as the decisions made in the office today can’t be changed for another 12 months – so basically if I make a mess of it, I have to look at it for 12 months.

Already ticked off from the back-end of last year are our seed plans, varieties and areas. We are squared-up on land for the year coming also, with around 400 acres of root crops and vegetables going in – or already in. Fertiliser plans are still banging away inside my head though.

At the end of the day, it’s very hard to tell if your tweaks have had a tangible effect – positive or negative – unless you run some control plots

Crop nutrition is a bit of a dark art – add a little of this, take away a little of that. At the end of the day, it’s very hard to tell if your tweaks have had a tangible effect – positive or negative – unless you run some control plots. Even still, you have to be 100% sure that your control is pure and consistent with your other test areas, something that is hard to do with vegetables.

We have added a few irrigators to the stable over the winter. I always try and buy any irrigation gear we need in the back-end or certainly before mid-February, as after that guys start to see good weather coming and the price starts to jump. Three reels in and one reel out will have us covered for the season ahead if it becomes very dry.

Carrot and parsnip harvests are on the back straight at this stage, with the end in sight but only just. It gets tricky at this time of year when you are planting back and harvesting at the same time. We totted it up the other day, if all activities have to happen on the one day, which is possible, we could have more than 25 tractors and loaders on the move – a bit of a logistics challenge.

We have added a couple of tractors for this season, one big shiny one and another little (soon to be shiny after a refurb) one.

We are waiting with baited breath to see what happens with TAMS for us black sheep in the family of Ireland’s crop producers. We have a couple of potential add-ons we are looking for in terms of autosteer and precision farming technology but as yet we haven’t made it to the top of the minister’s pile.

Never more so as cereal growers have we felt the pressure of grass blocking up large swathes of land as we have this back-end and spring. Tillage around here is like a fighter on the ropes getting battered. Hopefully, like the great Ali against Foreman, we can land a few good digs here and there and hold some land back from grass.