spring fertilizer.

AnFeirmeoir

I've closed fields off since early november, but they havent acumulated much grass at all. Was thinking of puttting out urea around 20th Feb. Lambing starts 1st march and want to minimize any feeding after lambing. Once that starts , I wont have time to do anything.

20th Feb too early for urea ?

AntrimGlens

If there's little grass now and you're lambing 1st March you'd want to get it on to try and have some grass for turning ewes and lambs onto. I'm going with some compound this weekend although soil temps still aren't that high, and i'm not lambing to Paddys day, better to have it on and hope that temps pick up than have no grass and have to supplement. I would usually spread here on 14th Feb every year and have seen it snow after that and still enough grass for freshly lambed ewes, but there's at least a 3 week difference before grass comes on the fields higher up than those around the yard.
A lot would depend on your soil fertility too.

White Clover

AnFeirmeoir wrote: »

I've closed fields off since early november, but they havent acumulated much grass at all. Was thinking of puttting out urea around 20th Feb. Lambing starts 1st march and want to minimize any feeding after lambing. Once that starts , I wont have time to do anything.

20th Feb too early for urea ?

Have u soil tested recently ? Sounds like your indexes and ph are low. If so, I would avoid urea in favour of 10 10 20 or 18 6 12. Very hard to raise indexes without correcting ph first.

AnFeirmeoir

AnFeirmeoir wrote: »

I've closed fields off since early november, but they havent acumulated much grass at all. Was thinking of puttting out urea around 20th Feb. Lambing starts 1st march and want to minimize any feeding after lambing. Once that starts , I wont have time to do anything.

20th Feb too early for urea ?

Yes the ph is low. Lime On my list for 2 years now

rangler1

AnFeirmeoir wrote: »

Yes the ph is low. Lime On my list for 2 years now

No point in looking for growth until soil temps go over 6 degrees and even at that it's only well fertilised ryegrasses that grow at 6, lesser grasses need over 7 to grow.
Soil temperatures are only 5 here(midlands), I don't even see the dafs up yet around here

Green farmer

AnFeirmeoir wrote: »

Yes the ph is low. Lime On my list for 2 years now

How low is low feirmeoir ? Awaiting soil test results here. They told me that ph was 5.9 and 6.3 in my samples but these's a big backlog to get overall results of p &k's back from labs. Their swamped under at this time of year. Was thinking about gran lime as need to take silage cuts from fields this year. Not sure how ground lime would effect this .

rangler1

Green farmer wrote: »

How low is low feirmeoir ? Awaiting soil test results here. They told me that ph was 5.9 and 6.3 in my samples but these's a big backlog to get overall results of p &k's back from labs. Their swamped under at this time of year. Was thinking about gran lime as need to take silage cuts from fields this year. Not sure how ground lime would effect this .

Ph 6.3 is fine for grass

Green farmer

Thanks rangler. The 6.3 is a grazing field, and the 5.9 was a field next to thats grazed and has a cut of hay / silage taken off every year as well. Was thinking the 5.9 one could do with abit of a top up of lime ?