Tips for dealing with rain-disrupted crops and plans.

Climatechangeornormalweather pattern? It’s a question I keep asking myself as we wait impatiently for the spring to dry up and to get moving with the mounting workload.

It seems to have been relentless since last summer, with constant wet disrupting crops and plans, and in the back of your mind you wonder if we will then be hammered with a drought in the months ahead when we finally get going?

Crops on the farm as a result can best be described as the Clint Eastwood classic ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly’.

The oilseed rape which I experimented planting with my 5m disc and air-seeder has survived the winter really well and is growing nicely.

Naturally, I had some pigeon grazing damage but this was quite small and I ended up with a Green Area Index (GAI) of around 2.0, meaning I could delay my first split of chemical nitrogen from late February until early March and also reduce the planned total N amount for the season.

I applied ASN (26pc N + 14pc S) at 247kg/ha on March 10 as a consequence.

The herbicide Kerb was applied as planned at 1.7lt/ha on January 17 when the crop had hardened off.

Trafficability for both runs was not a problem, indicating that my low-disturbance establishment system is helping greatly with soil structure and drainage (it’s the sheer volume of water that’s the problem in some of the low-lying areas).

The winter wheat and rye, however, haven’t been so lucky.

I intend persevering with parts of the wheat on a reduced management programme, but many parts are so patchy that I plan to take these out and plant spring feed or malting barley instead.

This is partly for my sanity, but also because of my poor experience with delayed payments last year as a result of incorrectly identified ‘eye in the sky’ claims which were subsequently cleared up by inspection.

No farmer can afford to be without their BISS payment at a time of the year where all bills must be paid.

I will also have to replant the rye, which is a write-off with waterlogging where it was sown.

So my entire cropping and nutrient management plan has to be redrawn and rotation re-planned

going forward.

I will end up with more spring barley than I would like to plant around here, but with some of it for malting, maybe this will work out for the best if a decent payment is available, given the increased level of interest in malt.

Also, my planned area of spring beans has now risen to a third of my cropping area whenever it gets planted in the coming few weeks, although it is now beginning to get late.

There is a genuine desire to support this crop as a native protein source in animal rations, and it will also greatly help to reduce my carbon footprint on the farm for 2024.