Weather’s Impact on Farm Conditions and Crop Health
Weather and farm conditions is always a common and most important topic among agricultural consultants and farmers and as such, today will be no different. As everyone has experienced, the majority of us have suffered long bouts of constant rain always keeping the surface wet.
The Double-Edged Sword of Rain
Rain is both a wonderful thing giving us what was a much-needed supply of H2O certainly last year when it did arrive but as we all know and have likely experienced, it can also easily have its set-backs in excess… One of those potential setbacks is it’s impacts on nutritional availability with excessive rainfall and long-term wet conditions. Key elements such as Nitrogen, Sulphur, Boron, and various trace elements such as Manganese are very readily leachable. Due to this and the prolonged state of affairs we have had, the availability of these elements (unless you have exceptional organic matter content in the soil and had good continuing biological activity over the winter), are very likely to be in short supply and this is something of concern that we need to take into account for initial plant development and growth certainly if we want to establish our crops to a greater yield potential.
Impact on Crop Establishment
Many crops that are in the ground and crops that didn’t have the available conditions to receive early nutrition or microbial inoculants to promote initial root growth, plant tillers and crop health, haven’t managed to establish themselves in the cold and wet conditions so far. Plants haven’t tillered and rooting is poor where they have only had cold soil and sat with wet feet over winter.