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Gary Gillespie, UCD Lyons Farm, Celbridge, Co Kildare
The winter crops look well at UCD Lyons Farm and have benefitted from the recent good weather. Most of Gary’s winter cereal plots are just reaching GS30 now, having been planted in the middle of November.
The winter barley is the most advanced of the crops, and is nice and thick. The winter wheat is thinner, but it should not be an issue. The oats also look well, while the winter rye has a massive number of tillers.
These plots will not receive any chemical fertiliser or pesticide applications due to the demonstrative nature of the plots. However, the field is in its second year after permanent pasture, and has soil indexes of four, so there should still be a high amount of fertility in the soil. A crop rotation is also practised in the field. These cereal plots are placed where pea plots were last year.
A couple of spring barley and spring wheat plots were also planted in November for research purposes, and while the seeds germinated and emerged nicely, they have since died due to the very low temperatures in January.
Gary is developing an electrically operated robotic platform, called Norman, to assist in collecting various types of crop data from the diverse range of plots grown at Lyons Farm each year. These include LiDAR measurements for recording plant height and images captured by both standard and multi-spectral cameras.
By analysing these images, leaf area index of the crops can be calculated, crop diseases can be detected, and plant stresses can be identified before they become visible to the naked eye.
This year, Gary plans to equip Norman with solar panels to extend battery life, allowing for longer operation in the field and allowing for a larger array of sensors to be powered at any one time.
Additionally, he is working on a machine vision-based PWM (pulse width modulation) sprayer, which will enable targeted spraying of weeds in and around plots, reducing chemical usage, while improving precision.
Tom Murray, O’Shea Farms, Pilltown, Co Kilkenny
Tom was delighted with recent weather and the pressure it has taken off in the fields. When we spoke on Monday of this week, 75% of the spring barley was drilled on the farm. Florence has been planted for malting and Geraldine for feed. Those crops got all of their fertiliser into the seedbed.
It’s a busy time on the farm. The early carrots are in their drills now and potato planting will start this week. The first variety in will be Maris Piper, then on to Roosters and they will finish with salads. Tom said there is no panic on planting, they planted late last year and had good quality and yields.
He is focused on producing a nice seedbed, noting that they will plough two days ahead of the rotavator to prevent a hard surface from forming that needs to be cultivated before planting.
Tom says that while the weather has been good there is no panic on planting potatoes as frost is a huge risk with the crop.
He adds that he is keen to get crops into drills in good conditions and the seedbed is warming up now. He just needs to balance the frost risk.
In the winter cereal fields there is plenty of spraying to be done. Winter barley has its main split of nitrogen and received CeCeCe and Moddus.
This week it will get a T1 of Macfare Xpro. Winter wheat and winter oats will get their main splits of nitrogen this week. They will also receive CeCeCe and Moddus this week. A T0 of Sulphur at 3l/ha will be applied to the winter wheat, while the oats will get a Proline and Comet mix.
Victor Love, Strabane, Co Tyrone
Victor has his spring wheat planted about two weeks now and it was near emergence earlier this week. KWS Fixum is the variety and it was planted at 218kg/ha into the bean stubble.
Victor uses a direct drill and said that the beans left the ground in great order.
On the day of sowing, Victor could not believe that the soil temperature was 9°C. He put 250kg/ha of 22-4-14+S into the seedbed. The spring wheat will get pig slurry when it is up and growing. Slugs are often an issue for Victor and he rolled the wheat at nighttime to try and reduce numbers. He applied ferric phosphate lentils at 5kg/ha to reduce numbers.
Spring barley is his next priority. Victor aims to sow sometime this week. Conditions are good and temperatures are increasing. He thinks he will plant Geraldine or Hurler.
Willow herb is an issue for Victor and glyphosate is not controlling it. He plans to use Zypar when the spring barley is up.
He normally wouldn’t cultivate ahead of the drill, but says the spring barley ground will be disced to try and reduce slug numbers.
Victor is still deciding whether or not to plant beans this year. They would be going into a grass field and he has plenty of customers for haylage that he doesn’t want to let down, but beans do have the advantage of the protein payment and the value to the soil.
Last year the beans were not harvested until November and December, and a small amount were not cut as they were damaged by the frost. This is the first time that it happened on the farm, but it is a risk with the weather in the north west.
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