The cereal harvest is complete in Waterford but there is still 43ac of spring beans, which Pádraig is hoping to harvest this week. Some pods are still green but he says that it’s worth a try to see if they are ripe.

Pádraig would have liked to apply organic fertiliser after the beans were harvested, but will not be able to due to the closing of the slurry spreading period. He has applied slurry to fields with low phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) indices in the past week.

The WPB Isabel spring oats yielded just over 3t/ac at 17% moisture and a KPH of 55. A couple of trailer loads had a KPH of 57, which was unbelievable for late-sown spring oats. The straw was baled and produced 7.5 bales/ac in dry conditions.

Once this was completed, Pádraig sat down with his agronomist and made a winter cropping plan and placed his seed order. He will begin planting in the coming days if the weather allows.

Pádraig says that 8 or 9 October would be a typical starting date in his area. Depending on the weather, the wheat may be planted before the barley due to the soil types of the fields. All stubbles to be planted were sprayed with glyphosate earlier this week at 2.5l/ha.

Pádraig plans to sow 103ac of winter barley, which will be Integral, Belfry and SY Canyon. He was going to give up on winter wheat, but is giving it one more go in a 20ac field not suited to winter barley. The variety will be Fitzroy.

For winter oats, Pádraig would like to try out the new variety, Enya, but is waiting to hear whether Flahavan’s will be accepting it next harvest. Pádraig plans to sow 47ac of winter oats, which he would not plant until near the end of October.

It’s a busy time in Galway, as Conall tries to harvest beans in addition to planting winter cereals. He finished up the spring oats recently, which yielded 2.5t/ac and eight bales per acre. These oats were sown at the end of April.

Conall made a start on the March-sown spring beans once the cereals were completed. They yielded 2.3t/ac. They were pretty ripe when cut two weeks ago and Conall was happy to make the most of the fine weather at the time.

The crop produced six round bales per acre, which was more than expected.

Conall says there is a lot of demand in his area for bean straw, especially for feeding. He says he could sell more bean straw if he had it. The beans planted on 27 April are ready to be harvested too when the weather allows.

Conall started planting winter barley last Friday in fairly good conditions and got 40ac drilled before the wind and rain on Sunday.

The ground soaked pretty well after two days of heavy rain during the week, giving Conall the opportunity to make a start. He is planting with a one-pass close behind the plough.

The variety was Integral and it was planted at 185kg/ha. This variety claims BYDV tolerance, which should alleviate some of the impacts of early planting. It was a busy few days, with five tractors in the field at once: ploughing, drilling, spreading slurry before the plough, spreading granulated lime, and hedge-cutting.

Conall has 175ac to plant in total including hire work – 25ac of this is winter wheat, which Conall has not planted for the last three years.

He would have sowed this last week but the seed was not delivered on time.

The variety is KWS Dawsum. The winter oats will be planted last. The variety to be planted is WPB Isabel.

Winter planting is well under way in Down, and Neill was expecting to finish drilling barley on Tuesday. He started early last week as he wanted to get some work done before the maize harvest begins this weekend.

Last weekend provided more good weather before the rain stopped work on Monday.

Neill says the maize cobs have matured well and the plants have dried out well, so the harvest will now depend on the weather forecast.

Late September is a normal planting date for Neill and the great soil conditions were too good to pass up. This even allowed for all fields to be rolled post-planting after ploughing and drilling with a one-pass.

SY Canyon makes up 70% of the barley area as it performed well this year with SY Armadillo making up the remainder.

Both are six-row hybrid varieties and are being planted at 100kg/ha. The winter wheat will be planted as soon as the maize is harvested. Graham has performed well on the farm and will be planted again while Neill is also trying out two new varieties, Bamford and LG Beowulf.

The spring beans were harvested two weeks ago and yielded 1.9t/ac at 17% moisture.

This isn’t a terrible yield but Neill thought the crop looked excellent and is disappointed as it is back 0.5t/ac on last year.

Neill says weed control was not as good as usual and the beans struggled in wet spots where the ground was saturated for too long in the spring. However, Neill says that getting the chance to bale the bean straw was a bonus, and the five round bales/ac attracted plenty of customers.

Neill thinks the crop may have needed a second fungicide, but this would have caused the crop to stay greener for longer and delay harvest even further.

The stubble turnips have come on well after slug damage at emergence.

Chicken litter was applied to fields destined for beans and the stubble turnips are much better in these fields.