Petals of Progress: Cultivating Growth This Spring!
Navigating Wet Conditions and Preparing for Crucial Spring Decisions
For many, it’s been a long winter and we’re still not quite at the end of it yet. That’s not to say that the signs of spring aren’t starting to be spotted but the problem is whilst we are getting the occasional bright day, they are few and far between. Oh, and if you haven’t noticed, it’s still raining quite a lot. On that note, if anyone wants to think back to February last year in which many had only about 10% of normal rainfall, this year we’re already, on average, at or over 200% for a large proportion of the country.
In happier news, Aiva have had quite a productive winter with the Time to Talk events having now completed their tour around the regions. This has been the first year without our original ‘spokesman’ Nick Woodyatt, although if you read the Farmers Weekly you may have seen that he hasn’t quite hung up his boots as an independent consultant… yet. He might have retired from Aiva, but he and Tim Parton are still banging the drum about the message and proving year after year that they can make it successful.
So given the pretty tough conditions that started in July last year, what are we thinking now that, whatever the weather actually does, decisions are going to need to be planned, and made, very soon.
Firstly, the story isn’t what you can see from the farm gate. It’s difficult to believe for many but there are some nice-looking crops out there. However, go and dig up some plants and have a look at the root structure and mass. Some of our early field walking has revealed that there is a real disconnect between plant and soil. Not only is the root bundle not as big as it should be, but once you get down below the surface inch or so there often isn’t any significant formation of a rhizosheath. In practice, that means that the plant either isn’t producing exudates to feed soil biology, or it is but there’s no response.
It’s tough to imagine a worse place for the plant to start the spring in so, in typical agricultural fashion, we’re going to make things worse by applying the 1st nitrogen as soon as conditions allow.
This is going to force growth and biomass to increase. The plant will respond, it will green up and start growing and, initially, that’s going to make things feel better.
However, the crops are going to very quickly run short of the essential nutrition that they would normally get from the soil, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if we see some very early signs of stress and weakness (anyone else spotted early mildew in wheat yet?!), be it disease, pest or visual nutrient deficiencies.
One of our colleagues at Aiva suggested that, in the spirit of IPM (Integrated Pest Management) which has now been widely accepted, we should also be talking about INM (Integrated Nutrition Management) and that it should be a tool which encompasses all the non ag-chem inputs that we consider. Making informed decisions should be a system-based approach, not a product one and perhaps things like NUE could, and should, stand for Nutrient (not Nitrogen) Use Efficiency and be applied to all fertiliser inputs to help growers make good decisions.
From Aiva the advice now is simple, we need to get these crops building root mass, making connections with the soil and generally stimulating the system to get ready for spring. To find a way to create conditions so that these crops can get away once 1st N is applied.
This could be as complicated as you like if you’re further down the nutritional path, but a straightforward option would be a carbon source like CITADEL or NURTURE N for energy, amino acids and a small amount of potassium, AIVA PHOSPHORUS, also for energy and to stimulate rooting and replace some of the P that the plants should be getting from interaction with soil biology & PULSAR to get in almost all the other micronutrients that the plant will need. If you get an opportunity to make this pass, then ahead of 1st N would be best. If not then just as soon as conditions allow you to travel.
Fingers crossed that the next newsletter doesn’t start along the lines of ‘early spring drought’ as that is certainly the worry from many growers that we speak to and would be a significant challenge after the winter we’ve had.
