Even though that harsh northeasterly wind has abated, the mild, soft weather most farmers and gardeners are looking for just hasn’t come yet.

Despite this, grass growth rates are still on the up and are looking positive for the week ahead.

One of the key factors used in deriving the Teagasc predicted growth rates is sunshine hours. Luckily, there has been good sunshine over the past few weeks and this is one of the main drivers of grass growth.

Jobs for the bank holiday weekend revolve around making sure there is sufficient fertiliser applied to capitalise on grass growth rates over the next two months.

Explosion in growth

The big explosion in growth is going to come, it’s just a matter of when and farms should be in the space to capture as much of this growth as possible, either down the cows’ necks or in a silage stack.

For those who have spread a lot less nitrogen than normal so far this year, the best return will be to spread it now.

Going with 30 units of nitrogen per acre (37kg N/ha) should deliver about 1.3t of extra grass per hectare over and above not spreading any nitrogen.

Yes there will be a cost to this but it’s growing valuable feed. Now, if you don’t need the grass then don’t spread the nitrogen but I would suggest that even if this grass was turned into silage and that silage was sold, it should deliver a good return on investment.

Exception

The exception to all of this is where clover is present in good quantities. In such situations it makes perfect sense to reduce to almost zero how much chemical nitrogen is applied.

For farmers used to spreading nitrogen it takes a massive leap of faith but in the medium to long term it’s probably the right thing to do.