- Location
- Hereford
anyone putting Nitrogen on yet.....I'm so tempted to on my winter barley.
Middle/third week of Feb is the suggestion normally.When do you guys , and girls , start applying fertiliser to your winter barley in Devon and Cornwall especially on the coast ?
agree, but therein lies my slight concern, chances are soil type will mean you will be on before we could sensibly travel, which with a good week means wont be going much before the 15th , my records 30 years or more here show any later and we will be compromising yieldDaff buds here are well above the leaves, an odd one in sheltered places are starting to just show a little colour.
I walked my osr this morning and it's starting to move, the stems are begining to extend so I'll be on with a cwt acre of AN as soon as possible hopefully next week.
Barley will get half it's N as urea after that...weather permitting.
every day counts, id rather be a few in front than playing catch up. Much used to be made of the expression timeliness in my opinion its timeliness minus a week that makes the job easier/ more productive,its a loveley sunny day here now with a drying wind looks like weve got a race on between us ,ho ho. but im not making ruts yet!!We find here that in a "normal" year(if there is such a thing) delaying first N on barley especially but also osr and ww beyond mid Feb sees yields fall away.
Last year this became especially noticeable. I started top dressing the week before the beast from the east and finished the first dressing the week after. My neighbours thought I was mad especially as I was using a high first dose of 70 units/a.c. on everything but as the season progressed my gamble paid off.
I just wished I'd started a couple of days sooner and got it all done before the beast struck as the stuff that did get it before was the best yielding, as harvest progressed you could tell when first N was applied by the yields despite there only being a fortnight difference.
After The wind we've had the last couple of days, everything had dried up a treat but the rain today will mean it'll need a day or two to settle.