I don't know if I dare I say it, but with the oilseed rape extending rapidly the pigeon wars seem to be abating slightly, writes Andy Barr from East Lenham Farm, near Maidstone.
Mind you I spoke recently to someone farming several thousand acres who had 14 gas guns deployed and was using a box of rope bangers every day, so I suppose I've had it easy really.
The Tipple barley turned a nice shade of grey in freezing winds over the Easter weekend but now looks healthier again, so I'm keen to put the last nitrogen on and am hoping to do the same to the oilseed rape before it's too tall.
I also have wheat T0 fungicides and nutrients ready to go and even have a little bit of spring rape to put in. But everywhere is very, very wet.
I am in a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (it irks me a little that some of my field boundaries form the NVZ boundary) and carefully worked out my total nitrogen doses using the Planet software.
You probably won't be surprised to hear that I had concerns over the 180 kg/ha recommended for wheat after oilseed rape on what is potentially my highest yielding bit of land.
I duly had a couple of soil N tests done predicting that I could use the outcome to justify a higher input. The result? A potential supply of 136 kg/ha of N.
Why, I'm not sure. Maybe it's the result of sewage sludge applied two years ago, and/or very shallow tillage for seven seasons.
Although they are of disputed worth, I have had such tests done for several years and have never had such a high result in a continuous arable situation, sludge or no sludge.
So if I had started off wanting to apply 220 kg/ha of N, and then followed TAG's advice of taking off one kilogram of N from the fertiliser applied for every kilogram the test reads over 100 kg/ha, that would leave a revised recommendation of 184 kg/ha - very close to the Planet figure.
Perhaps there is something in this RB209 after all!
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