Harvest ’23 continues to be a stop-start affair

Despite the poor weather, many farmers are either finished or very close to being finished the harvest. However, Michael Hennessy, Teagasc Head of Crops Knowledge Transfer, reports that is certainly not the case all across the country.

There is still quite a substantial amount of the harvest to conclude. The good weather so far this week is due to end today, with more persistent rain and showers forecast for the next three or four days.

Yields this harvest have been the most variable for some time. Yields in almost all crops are reported as being very low, but there are also some very high yields also. On any farm, it’s not the high yields or the low yields which the grower should be concentrating on, it’s the average across the farm.

Farmers can often be disappointed about yields from individual fields. They then take the combine header off and move to the next field and are amazed at the yields from that field; perhaps forgetting about the poor-yielding field and just adding that to the overall average for the farm.

There's huge merit in thinking harder about why there was a poorer yield on some fields compared to others. The field may have had some bare patches due to water logging over last winter. Perhaps the headlands were quite poor, as a result of poor establishment and subsequently a poor crop was harvested, or maybe the field overall had a reasonable crop in it but it just didn't yield.

The root cause of lower yield can often be attributed to water - either too much or a lack of water. There isn't much we can do about the lack of water, but certainly there are plenty of fields where attention to drainage may well be area to look at first. There is a short window to sort out these problems, especially between winter crops. More time is available if spring crops are destined for that field next year.   

Areas which had standing water over the winter or perhaps in March or even in July need to be looked at carefully. In many circumstances, the job is completed by a specialised contractor, so this shouldn’t get in the way of the harvest in the next few weeks.

The other area which can result in poor yields is poor soil fertility. The core of a healthy soil is soil pH, but also the levels of phosphorous (P) and potassium (K) in the soil. It may be that previous soil tests are now out of date or the areas sampled weren't from a small enough area to pick up variation across the field. Identify the poor-yielding areas in the field and specifically soil test those areas to ensure its soil has adequate pH, P or K. This should be a priority in the next few weeks.  

Other issues such as poor fertiliser application, which happened on many farms this year due to the widespread shift to urea need to be accounted for. Lessons can be learned from that experience and tray testing needs to become more of a standard practice where urea is being used.   

Other issues such as weed control or disease control may be reasonably obvious, but not always in some cases. Herbicide resistance is becoming a bigger issue on all farms - whether that's grass weeds or broad-leaf weeds, both of which will affect yield where the population is high.   

There is a free test available by Teagasc Oak Park. However, in order to complete this test, viable seeds need to be sent to Oak Park. Contact your advisor, or follow the instructions on: https://bit.ly/3MrlcgR or take a picture of this QR code using your smart phone:

Disease control, in the main, was reasonably good this year, but there were cases where the results weren't as good as hoped for. Reflect on the timings, but also the rates used through the year, to ensure that products were applied in the best possible circumstances and at the correct growth stages of the crop. 

Have a listen to the most recent Teagasc Tillage Edge podcast, where we chat to Brendan Burke who is the Farm Manager in Oak Park, who provides an update on how the harvest is going in the research centre. Access the Teagasc Tillage Edge podcast here.