From the Tramlines: We are back and ready to grow

Brian Crowley

Ballycotton, Co Cork

Brian farms 510 acres in partnership with his brother Paul, in Cork. The farm has a mixture of owned and rented land, with a sandy loam, free-draining soil. Brian says they can often travel the fields two or three days after heavy rainfall.

The farm also fattens some beef cattle. This year, Brian is growing winter barley for seed and malting, winter and spring wheat for seed, winter oilseed rape, spring beans, spring malting barley and fodder beet.

Fields are ploughed for winter cereals, spring crops are min-tilled, including beet, while oilseed rape and beans are strip-tilled.

The availability of three systems gives Brian a lot of flexibility when it comes to planting.

Brian applies cattle slurry to growing crops in the springtime, when ground conditions allow.

The winter crops look good on the farm except for one field of winter wheat by the coast. Storm Éowyn and subsequent heavy rain battered the crop and Brian is considering replanting the field.

Barty O’Connor

Clohamon, Co Wexford

Barty returns for his second year on From the Tramlines. He remains an avid malting barley grower, but he has decided to stop growing winter malting barley due to poor variety choices.

This year he is growing winter feed barley, with the BYDV tolerant variety Orcade being grown.

Florence spring malting barley will be the main crop on the farm, while spring oats will also be planted to meet the three crop rule conditions, which Barty is not a fan of.

Barty ploughs, tills, and sows for all his crops, and his land ranges from very sandy, light soils to land that can get quite wet on the banks of the river Slaney.

Barty’s winter barley remained green over the past couple of months and looks very strong. He applied compound fertiliser to it on 28 February. He notes that there were 80mm less rainfall on his farm last year compared to 2023, even if it did not feel like it.

Barty says the rain always came at the wrong time, and he is hopeful that the weather will be kinder this year.

Gary Gillespie

UCD Lyons Farm, Celbridge, Co Kildare

Gary is an assistant professor at UCD in crop science.

UCD Lyons Farm, the university’s dedicated teaching and research farm, extends to 250ha and there are a number of crop science research projects ongoing at present.

Gary will keep us up to date throughout the year on this research, with a special focus on one set of 250 plots, which contain many different crops.

This includes, but is not limited to, cereals including naked oats and black oats, oilseed rape, maize, camelina, sunflowers, lupins, buckwheat, peas, phacelia, potatoes, vegetables, and industrial crops, such as calendula and echium.

There are both winter and spring varieties of the cereals, with the rest of the species spring-drilled.

There will also be a normal planting date and late-sown plots.

These plots will be used for teaching purposes and also to assess the potential viability of these crops in an Irish climate.

Pa Shine

Ardfinnan, Co Tipperary

A grower spending a second year with us is Pa Shine.

He grows a wide range of cereals on his farm, with a focus being placed on premium crops. This year, Pa has gluten-free oats, malting barley and seed crops on his farm.

The farm extends to 800ac of owned and rented land, and all ground is ploughed each year, with fertile, free-draining soil dominating on the farm.

Pa is happy going into this growing season, with all winter crops planted in good conditions.

The winter barley received nitrogen in mid-February, as it was starting to yellow, and the hybrid barley has received a plant growth regulator recently.

Land dried out well in the past couple of weeks, with Pa ploughing and sowing spring oats. He hopes to get spring barley drilled soon.

It has been an easier spring so far for Pa compared to the past couple of years, and he can only hope that the weather is kind for the rest of the season.

Victor Love

Strabane, Co Tyrone

Victor farms on the banks of the Foyle on the border of Tyrone and Derry.

He farms a total of 123ac, with only 6ac of this being rented.

The soil type varies widely from heavy clay on top of sand by the river, to very light land with lots of glacial round stones. In dry summers, this light land is prone to drought, whereas the land by the river can flood easily.

Victor plants all his crops by direct drill using a T-Sem tine direct drill. He has used this system for 16 years.

He says that there was very little information about direct drilling when he started, and he has learned something new every year.

Compaction and slugs have been the biggest issues. The spring beans were not harvested until December last year, and this prevented winter wheat from being planted. Therefore, Victor will have all spring crops this year, in addition to grassland, which he cuts for haylage.

Tom Murray

O’Shea Farms, Piltown, Co Kilkenny

Tom joins us for a second year of From the Tramlines. As an agronomist for O’Shea Farms in south Kilkenny, he manages crops of winter barley, winter oats, winter wheat, including some for seed, potatoes, carrots, spring barley, spring oats, and forage maize.

The maize is used by the 400-cow dairy herd on the farm, which extends to 1,200ac in total including grassland.

Most ground is ploughed, and there is a mixture of sandy, silty, and loam soils, with all of it being good, fertile soil.

Tom got all winter crops planted on time and in good conditions last autumn.

This is in contrast with the previous two years when late potato and vegetable harvests meant that winter crops were not planted

The crops look splendid and only received their first split of fertiliser recently.

In 2024, 1,135mm of precipitation fell on the farm.

Donald Logue

Muff, Co Donegal

Donald is an organic tillage and horticulture farmer from Donegal. He has been organic for the past eight years.

He had three polytunnels, but the largest one blew down in the recent storm, and he is currently in the process of dismantling and moving it to a better location.

In the polytunnels, he grows lettuce, spring onions, and tomatoes, both cherry and large varieties.

He also grows about 40ac of a combi-crop of peas, barley and oats.

This is dried and crushed on the farm, and the vast majority of the grain stays in Donegal with organic farmers.

There are also seven acres of organic potatoes, as well as brussels sprouts, and cabbage.

Donald only has two acres of ploughing left to do.

He likes to plough early to ensure a good kill of weeds and to prevent any pests or diseases from carrying over into the next crop.

He says he doesn’t have the same tools as conventional farmers, so he must make the best use of what’s available to him.

Stephen Wallace

Mountrath, Co Laois

Stephen farms just over 100ac of tillage in Laois alongside running a fencing enterprise.

He says it would not be a huge tillage area, with heavy soils that wouldn’t be very well draining. However, he does have some lighter fields too.

Stephen took over the running of the farm four to five years ago, and this is the first year that he has winter wheat.

He also grows winter oats, spring barley, and winter beans.

Some of the winter beans were decimated by crows over the winter and this will be replanted with spring beans.

All land is ploughed, with spring ploughing beginning last week, but Stephen is interested in trying out minimum tillage in the next couple of years. A lot of pig slurry is used on the farm, applying before spring crops are planted and onto growing winter crops in springtime if conditions allow.

Pádraig Connery

Villierstown, Co Waterford

Pádraig returns to From the Tramlines for a second year. His farm in Waterford has contracted by 10ha this year due to the expiry of a lease. There are winter cereals, spring beans, and spring barley on the farm this year.

A massive 68% of the planted area has a premium attached to it, including malting contracts, oats for Flahavans, and seed contracts. Pádraig sees it as a no brainer as he can access the higher prices and premiums for only a small bit of extra work and crop husbandry.

Pádraig is very happy with his winter crops compared to twelve months ago; crops after beans are very lush, and winter barley has received all of its compound fertiliser in two splits over the past month. Liquid nitrogen will be used for the first time this year, trialling it on some of the spring barley.

The farm is applying to the Farming for Water EIP. Pádraig recently had a visit from an ASSAP adviser and some actions were identified to improve water quality.

Shaun Diver

Tullamore Farm, Co Offaly

The Irish Farmers Journal beef and sheep demonstration farm has always been a 100% grassland farm. However, farm manager Shaun Diver says that a desire to reduce the meal bill and the amount of imported protein used on the farm led to 5ac of a combi-crop of peas, barley and oats being planted last year. This went well, and has fed out very well.

This year, this combi-crop will be planted once again. The tillage area is expanding, with 10ac of spring barley to be grown too. Shaun says that the low availability of straw was one driver of this. He says that including tillage is also helpful when it comes to the farm’s reseeding plans.

The crops are established via the plough, till, sow method. The clay loam soils that the tillage is based on is still fairly wet so he is waiting for this to dry out before ploughing begins.