ACRES: On 1 January, you can graze your catch crops which were planted under ACRES. You will need a 3m buffer without a catch crop all around it and a 4m buffer beside a watercourse. In total, 30% of the area should be a lie-back of cultivated stubbles or grass.

Some of these crops will be flowering, so they may be toxic to grazing animals – make sure that you (or the farmer grazing the crops) know what you are dealing with. ACRES catch crops are only allowed to be lightly grazed. They cannot be zero-grazed.

If you are not grazing these crops, then they can be sprayed or incorporated from 1 January. If heavy frost is due, some farmers will roll these crops in the frost to break the stems. If there is a weed problem in the field, that will have to be addressed though and the rolling will not cover this.

Safety: If you’re not out in the fields over the Christmas period, then it might be a good time to complete a safety statement and do a walk around the farm to try to spot something that needs to be fixed, whether that’s a PTO cover that needs to be replaced or personal protective equipment that needs to be updated. Get them done now ahead of the busy season.

Soil sampling: This time of the year is ideal for soil sampling, especially seeing as the weather has been good and ground is relatively dry.

If you need an up-to-date set of soil samples, then you should sample as soon as possible in order to get results back quickly to complete a nutrient management plan and calculate your fertiliser requirements.

Many companies will take soil samples for you, but some farmers prefer to take the samples themselves. This allows you to take samples where you think there are fertility issues or where you had issues with crops.

Make sure you take a representative sample. If sampling a field, you should walk the field in a W pattern and take about 20 samples with a soil core to 10cm. Avoid spots where farmyard manure or lime was left to sit or anywhere else where there would be something that would skew the soil sample to an unrealistic situation.

The soil sample should only cover an area of 4ha, but you can take them every 5ha. Ideally, you should soil sample every three years, but samples are needed every four years for nitrates.

If your soil samples were not taken within this time, then you do not have any phosphorus allowance and cannot spread chemical phosphorus – and you will not be able to import slurry.

You should not soil sample land that has received lime, phosphorus or potassium in the past three to six months, as the results might not be realistic.

Happy New Year: The tillage team here at the Irish Farmers Journal hopes you are enjoying some time off over Christmas and you have a happy new year.