Let's all start growing Grain!?

The value for money side won't come into it if you can't buy enough ration, Those with good land will only have them selves to blame if they're short of ration

I have never grown an grain but with the last few years I was thinking of sowing 3 or 4 acres of oats each year for my own feed, also have a rotation for reseeeding each year, any of the older neighbours reckoned is was not worth doing, hassle of sowing it and getting it harvested but I still think it would be better even in a normal year to reduce stock numbers and grow enough or at least some of the grain needed as being fully stocked is a mugs game at present. Was wondering if someone on here would be able to advise me on how to grow oats, month to grow, fert to use, rate of seed to use, sprays needed during the year and what sort of time frame from sowing to harvest ?

Oats is a good choice as it would be the easiest crop to grow and does well even in marginal land.

standard would be plough till sow and roll. You can start sowing from mid March till beginning of may all that changes is your seeding rate so March early April 11-12 stone/acre to 14 stone/acre late April early may. Early you sow the early you harvest. Oats is usually harvested September to early October. When you sow it is all down to your ground and the current ground conditions.

when sowing put out a compound fertiliser like 10-10-20 or 18-6-12 depending on your soil index. And top dress with nitrogen when The crop is at the flag leaf stage. The old saying is you get out what you put in so if you don’t put it in you won’t have much of a crop

1st weed spray is very important and you can either use pre emergence or post emergence. Pre emergence is weather dependent and post emergence you need to know what weeds you have to use the right sprays. Once you’ve the weeds under control you’ll need to use growth regulator to shorten the crop as oats grows quite tall and is prone to lodging and fungicides around the flag leaf stage to prevent diseases getting into the crop

at harvest then when you harvest depends on whether your after wholecrop, crimp or dry grain. Each has its own stage right time to harvest.

this is only a rough outline of what goes into the crop and there’s a lot more to it when you get into the nitty gritty of it weather, ground type, weeds and diseases and pests.

the worst thing you can do is sow it and forget about it till harvest. Seen it too many times and your as well leave it in grass as to grow a **** crop

best thing you can do is get in touch with an agronomist or someone in your locality at crops to help out

What sort of money does it cost to crimp a tonne of barley? Is it ok to feed on its own to finishing cattle with silage if protein is up round 11 or 12% ?

No doubt it could be mixed with maize meal but will it be available next winter or at what cost.

Would €400/ha cover the cost, even on a tillage farm

The expression "that's for the birds" comes to mind

Using satellite imagery in the earliest stages of wheat growth, I was able to save more than 50% of my crops. This computable index. eos.com/industries/agriculture/msavi/ can be used for remote sensing to detect uneven seed growth. It can be compared to weather data on a graph showing the correlation between extreme weather and crop health.

High protein crops, let your ration be in the pit.