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Crop Crack 12.03.11
By Wendy Fearon
The wet and windy conditions over the latter part of the week has certainly slowed things down .The amount of work carried out during the prior dry spell has been immense. Slurry tankers had been busy as had ploughs and fertiliser sowers.
Winter cereal crops had really started to struggle and fertiliser should now be applied. All crops have lost much of their colour in recent weeks due to lack of nutrient uptake. Barley has yellowed, particularly the older leaves, indicating lack of available nitrogen. Wheat has also paled and gone purple due to lack of available phosphate and nitrogen. Nitrogen and phosphate are made available to plants by the activity of the soil microbes on unavailable forms of plant nutrients. These are converted to available forms through a series of chemical steps known as the Nitrogen and Phosphate cycles. However the rate of nutrient release from these cycles is very temperature sensitive, ceasing to occur at very low temperatures such as we’ve had over the last 4 months.
As soil temperatures improve over the next few weeks so the rate of nutrient availability will increase dramatically. This should also be supplemented by the application of fertiliser ideally a compound type to provide P & K also.
Any crops sprayed over the winter are very clean but weeds are now appearing in those which were missed. Othello and Bio Power are now the best option for weed control in winter wheat only. These actives are contact only and therefore need the grass to be completely emerged and growing actively, and are very effective on larger AMG. In addition they also have activity on a range of BLWs. The time has almost passed to treat grass weeds in winter barley.
Once spring growth commences properly contact herbicides give more reliable control, but their efficacy is critically linked to improving soil temperatures and active weed growth having begun.
There is very little disease on crops; the most pressing thing at the moment is fertiliser application. It is difficult to say what will happen with spring barley this season and whether or not prices will remain buoyant. The prices talked about for conacre over recent weeks has peaked and growers need to be mindful of changing trends year on year! Whilst weather conditions had been favourable lately it is important to remember the downside of sowing too early. Soil pests such as leather jackets and slugs will be much more threatening to early drilled crops as these crops are slower to emerge giving pests more time to attack emerging shoots.
Potato growers are now planning for the season ahead and there is a real need to assess the best means of weed control. I urge all potato growers to ensure when taking conacre to ask the question has aminopyralid been applied onto the land or has it been manured or slurried with product that has been treated with aminopyralid i.e. Forefront or Pharaoh.
Roundup Energy is still the best value for money in the glyphosate market with all its additional benefits over generics. Roundup Energy has faster uptake and greater consistency in a wider range of weather conditions. It is important to remember when comparing glyphosate prices the amount of active it contains, Roundup energy contains 450gm/l compared to 360gm/l in most other glyphosate.
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