Spring has finally sprung. It’s been very late, but a week of dry weather and suddenly everything seems okay again. 

I got the potato planting finished. I had to be patient to get the conditions right, but the Tillerstar is excellent when working on your own.

You can destone and plant using two machines. Each time I was lucky to get a two-day window where I prepared one day and planted the next.

See also: Planting and variety survey 2023 now open  

About the author

Richard Orr

Richard Orr farms cereals and potatoes in a reduced cultivation system in County Down, Northern Ireland, with his wife and two children. He is a cereals and oilseeds sector council member and focuses on soil and plant health. He also keeps a small number of cattle, pigs and sheep.

Read more articles by Richard Orr

The Queens are up and growing well. Taking time to plant the budded ones slowly has preserved the long buds and they are flying along.

Lack of moisture is definitely not going to be an issue at this stage. 

Potato stocks seem depleted on the mainland so, hopefully, new-season crops will have a chance of good prices.

Cold stores effectively killed the new-season potato trade, with big producers and processors storing potatoes for up to 12 months.

When a new maincrop harvest starts, markets are usually already depressed with stores filled with cheap potatoes.

Hopefully, they will not be this year.

Winter wheat seems to always do better in a cool spring and is looking full of potential – as is most wheat in the area.

The flag leaf was fully emerged on 12 May and by time you read this, it will have received its first fungicide.

The plan is to use a good fungicide alongside molasses, potash, magnesium and a run of other micronutrients.

It will be split over two applications, with molasses and potash in one and the fungicide and the rest in another. 

To date, the only treatment Extase has received is liquid N and molasses.

No fungicides or insecticides have been applied and it is looking very clean – partly due to the cool temperatures, but it is a great low-input variety. 

I’ve been experimenting with a soil application of molasses every two weeks and that will now swap to foliar application. 

Spring wheat that went in early March is now only starting to grow. It is going to be thinner than I would like, but we’ll just have to see what happens.