Coping with the cold dry conditions

The cold dry weather with late frosts has slowed growth and hampered crop management for farmers and on this week’s Tillage Edge podcast, Michael Hennessy is joined by Veronica Nyhan and Eoin Lyons with an update on the progress of winter crops.

Despite a really good start for spring crops, fields are slowly greening up but soils are very dry and soil moisture deficits were touching 40mm at the start of the week.

Veronica Nyham, a tillage advisor in Laois explained that a number of spring crops are struggling due to pest damage and perhaps sub optimal conditions at planting.

Eoin Lyons, Teagasc/Boortmalt joint program advisor in Wexford, said these poorer crops were mainly confined to the very early planted crops, with a plant stands of 250 plants per meter squared in many crops.

Both Veronica and Eoin also discussed the necessity of completing key agronomic tasks in the coming week despite the cool conditions.  The main tasks discussed are plant growth regulators to barley and oats and the main fungicide to winter wheat.

For more episodes and information from the Tillage Edge podcast go to:  teagasc.ie/thetillageedge

And don’t forget to register for the Teagasc monthly crop agronomy webinars with the next one on May 4th. For more information go to: https://www.teagasc.ie/tillagemonth/ 

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