Don’t miss the chance to apply a good dose of organic manure on depleted tillage soils

IT’S definitely not going to be an early season. There is a lot of work to be carried out and ground conditions are slow to come around.

Winter crops will shed their winter coat very quickly and it is important to have available nutrients close to them to allow them start off again. Spring crops will need to get into the ground before they can start their cycle.

The build-up in work pressure will need to be managed. Many had plans to make use of organic manures before planting.

This is especially so this year given the longer than normal winter that many livestock farms have had to endure, resulting in plenty of organic manure now looking for a home.

However, waiting to apply manure before ploughing in an already delayed season may add more time pressure to an already pressurised system. Don’t write it off though.

Provided that there is not an undue delay in waiting for applications to the land, a few extra days delay in sowing will be well worth it in most situations.

Given the depleted state of our of tillage soils, organic manures bear dividends way over and above their ‘paper’ nutrient contents. This is particularly true for soils normally in winter cropping and planned to be back in winter cropping in the future — here the opportunity to apply a good dose of manure should not be dismissed lightly.

The gain to the soil will bear long term dividends even to the point where delaying establishment of this crop to get organic manure could impose a yield penalty this season.

One aspect that is not fully taken into account when applying manure is the actual nitrogen content, especially in some of the lower N content manures such as farmyard manure or spent mushroom compost.

According to the new nitrates regulations from 2017, farmyard manure contains 4.5 kg N/tonne.

The availability of this nitrogen is given at 30pc. Therefore an application of 25t/ha farmyard manure gives 112kg N/ha or 33.75kg available N /ha.

That’s 27 units/acre in old money or a bag of CAN per acre. However, these are average figures and the 30pc figure is not written in stone either. Another figure often open to question is the 25 t/ha.

So where the plan is 25t/ha or 10 t/acre, areas may well get well over this amount.

Manure can contain a lot or very little straw. Obviously, manure with lower levels of straw will have a higher nutrient content than high levels of straw.

Where the manure is incorporated well and soil temperature and soil moisture are high, the availability can be much higher than the 30pc.

A combination of these factors could lead to some very high levels of available nitrogen from farmyard manure. Applying 50t/ha at a figure or