Brian Lock
Brian Lock
Brian Lock farms rented and
owned land in Dorset,
including 200ha (500
acres) at Silverlake Farm,
Sherborne. Cropping
includes wheat and barley
for feed, seed and malting markets plus oilseed rape
and herbage seed
WHAT a difference a weeks fine weather can make to the farming scene. We have been blessed with almost two weeks of dry weather now, with sunshine, some wind to help dry up the soil and varying degrees of frost last week.
We have more or less caught up with what we should have done last autumn and early winter and made a start on some spring fertiliser spreading.
Phosphate and potash have gone onto all our autumn sown wheat and barley, plus the newly sown and second year herbage seed and fields which have been ploughed for spring cereals and oilseed rape.
Standard rate is 250kg/ha of 0.24.24. This is, topped up as and when needed according to soil analysis, with muriate of potash (0.0.60) at anything up to 125kg/ha. This has now all been finished, thanks to our dual wheels.
We have also completed the balance of the herbicide spraying programme in the cereals and herbage seeds. For the cereals, Isotop (IPU) and Fenican (diflufenican and IPU), plus cypermethrin have been the main products. Care has had to be exercised with night frosts giving temperatures of -5C.
On some of the second year herbage seed we have used Leyclene (bromoxynil + ethofumesate + ioxynil) with L1700 wetter to tackle sterile brome in headlands. The instruction for this tank mix is to apply in as frosty conditions as possible – provided the liquid does not freeze in the pipes.
We are now putting on the first of the ammonium nitrate to the Molisto tetraploid hybrid ryegrass at 250kg/ha to encourage some early growth for the first grazing of these seed crops for our ewes and lambs in early March.
It has been a pleasure to get on with some work, to catch up and to sell some lambs in spite of the overall depressing and still declining economic conditions. *
Glad to be back on the land – Brian Lock is fast catching up with work halted in the winter by wet weather. Frosts are helping to boost brome control.