OPTIMAL fertiliser use remains the main ingredient to producing award-winning crop yields.

Despite a difficult growing year, Lincolnshire arable farmer, Tim Lamyman, still achieved six Yield Enhancement Network (YEN) Gold and Silver awards for remarkably high oilseed, wheat and barley yields. He put the results largely down to his fertiliser programme.

He had worked closely with Jeremy Nicholson and Ben Mead, East Midlands Frontier agronomists, and fertiliser supplier, Bionature UK, to grow his award-winning crops.

“Ultimately, Tim’s crops always capture high levels of water and sunlight,” said Mr Nicholson. “A big fundamental to high yielding crops is the root structure, which is encouraged by Delta K application at the start of the season.

“We repeatedly measure larger root systems where it has been applied versus where it hasn’t. An obvious, but central to high yielding, high quality crops, was also sunlight capture.

“Tim’s Bionature-applied crops stay greener for longer and so have time to capture more sunlight and turn it into energy and this is achieved by mid and late season foliar feeds Tip Top, Calflux and XStress, coupled with a robust fungicide programme,” he added.

Tim Lamyman won YEN medals in the highest cereal yield category, with 15.4 and 15.6t/ha, respectively, as well as a host of other gold and silver awards.

“Our farm’s approach is to produce resilient plants through the use of an advanced crop nutrition strategy,” he said.

“I’ve worked with Bionature since 2014 as a trial farmer, and their products are head and shoulders above the rest because they’re effective, consistent and tank mixable.

“We apply two 2.5-litre applications of Delta K in the autumn/winter and one more application in the early spring. This encourages large root development and more compact, shorter, stronger, stiffer stems to support biomass later on.

“We then move into the Tip Top part of the programme, which is a foliar NPK treatment applied at the T1-T1.5 stage, to create biomass and help tackle the potential potassium deficit.

“In oilseed rape, CalFlux is added as well to limit pod abortion. Using it in oilseed rape allows the plant to draw on the CalFlux source of calcium, using extremely clever technology that keeps the calcium in the flowering area of the plant, and under stressful conditions the plant draws on this source of calcium instead of the new growth.

“This in turn limited pod abortion, evens up seed size and strengthens the oilseed rape pods,” he added.

Tim explained that his approach is specifically aimed at productivity and in a tough year, where crops were under a lot of water stress, Bionature products performed under pressure.

“We had 650mm of water between September 1, 2019 – March 1, 2020, on the farm, which is in the Lincolnshire Wolds and the crops maintained greening later into the season, despite this excess water and lack of light.”