Here marks the beginning of the farming year at Meads Farm as we start planting the crops. So with the start of the year, comes the first (of many) farming gambles… ahem sorry…. decisions: when to drill (plant) the crops. This might seem like a straightforward one, just get on with it….but it is not. Blackgrass is a very damaging weed for us here and by waiting longer to drill, (delayed drilling) we can reduce the amount of weed in the crop. But, wait too long and the rain comes, and then you can’t drill at all. And as we all know, the wheat “won’t grow in the bag” so there are trade-offs to be made, discussions with the agronomist to be had and rain gauges to watch.
The agronomist is a many called Andy who advises on crop health – a “crop doctor” if you like. Keeping plants healthy, protecting them from pests and disease and reducing weed pressure is a crucial role on the farm and helps improve yields and efficiency and reduce waste. Andy will regularly walk the fields to look for signs of pests and disease and when these reach a threshold where they could be damaging, advise Tom on action. Sometimes this will involve spraying herbicides or fungicides, but increasingly we are looking for other methods of control, such as encouraging beneficial insects (like ladybirds) to eat pests. Drilling later will help reduce the requirement for herbicide but what we save in herbicide, we make up for in Cortisol when 60mm of rain comes over the crucial weekend… However, as I sit here now, Tom is about 80% of the way through with 36 hours before it rains again. So its all go.
Crucially (for me), for anyone who remembers from last month… the wheat has been planted alongside the beans! And the beans have survived their first ordeal (Tom was worried the drill might uproot some of them) and are going strong. Intercropping trial still live! Will keep you posted.
The sugarbeet should also be harvested in the next month or so. This is done by a contractor with a specialist sugarbeet harvester so dependent on when they want to come and harvest. Last year, the sugarbeet yield was poor because it had so little rain, this year it looks good… and so the optimism builds again…
Weather wise, we would like it to not rain for a few days so the crop can go in, and then I don’t think we mind too much for a while.