Crop Sprays & Advice
Our fully trained advisors and specialists provide a range of services to our clients. To get a taster of what we do, have a read below and watch the videos of our visit to John Mulhare’s farm where he’s growing a crop of sugar beet and Kevin Nolan’s farm where he’s growing a crop of winter wheat.
Beet
Beet is a popular topic this year, as farmers begin to plan next year’s fodder supplies. On April 20th, we visited John Mulhare’s farm where he was preparing to grow a crop of sugar beet, which will be used as a fodder source for livestock.
Preparation:
John began planning for this year’s crop since last July, when he applied farmyard manure following winter barley. John sowed a cover crop last July which was grazed by sheep in January and February and then sprayed with glyphosate in early April. “This was necessary – as though the Debut programme is excellent at controlling rape, charlock and many other members of the brassica family – when growing from seed in a beet crop, it is pretty much impossible to control an over-wintered forage rape crop.” John explained.
Soil pH is very important to a beet crop. John explained how low soil pH can be identified very easily in a forage rape crop.“Where soil pH is low, the fungus that causes club root will thrive. With brassica crops being highly susceptible to the disease, it will quickly become visible in subsequent crops of forage rape. The plants will either show severe signs of stunting or in extremely low pH situations fail to establish at all.”
John recommends splitting the first herbicide application and apply the products below. Apply just 60% of the rates listed and do so, two – five days apart.
First herbicide application:
- Debut – 30g/ha;
- Betenal maxxPro – 0.5L/ha;
- Venzar Flowable – 0.4L/ha;
- Goltix – 0.5L/ha;
- Super Rapeeze (methylated rapeseed oil) – 0.5L/ha (apply oil at full rate at each split).
- Betenal maxxPro – 1.5L;
- Venzar Flowable – 0.4L/ha;
- Goltix – 1.5L/ha;
- Super Rapeeze (methylated rapseed oil) – 1.0L/ha.
“The post-emergence spray can actually go on before the beet crop itself is fully emerged. In reality you are aiming to go post-emergence of the first weed flush and the size of the beet plants have no bearing on the timing of the application” John explained.
Winter Wheat
John Mulhare and Kevin Nolan, of Nolan Farming, also looked at a crop of winter wheat growing on Kevin’s farm.
Kevin explained that he took a chance on sowing a lot of his winter wheat at the end of November and early December. The varieties used were Bennington and JB Diego. When we visited, while the majority of the wheat looked good, some fields were more advanced than others and a small percentage were in poor condition – mainly due to wet headlands.
To make economic sense, John recommended treating the crops differently, which he outlines in the video below.
- Treoris – 2L/ha;
- OPUS Team – 1.5L/ha;
- SulfaMag – 1L/ha
Magnesium
John is a firm believer in reducing crop stress through foliar nutrition. Magnesium is one of the most important nutrients affecting crop yield; it affects photosynthesis and therefore yield. Applying magnesium late in the growing season can help to increase chlorophyll levels and help to keep the plant greener for longer. This increases photosynthesis. He plans to apply SulfaMag at 1L/ha at the crop’s T2 application.
“At the very end of its grain fill period, wheat can put on an another 0.2t/ha/day. So for a couple of euros spent on SulfaMag, you can get phenomenal dividends. Here at TerraChem, we always strive to put together programmes that will do everything possible to maximise the grower’s return on investment” concluded John.