
Overview
Andy’s farm is currently in mid-tier stewardship and the estate is very much involved in conservation work, including implementing butterfly strips and cover crop rotation.
He believes that growers need to play their part in adhering to the highest standards, while protecting the natural environment, alongside focusing on sustainability.
Read more in his blog below:
Questions & Answers
Blackgrass remains dominant in many areas across the country and has crept in slowly over the years on my farm.
It’s something that we’re dealing with on-farm and although we thought we were managing the weed quite well, this year we’ve been caught out with how big the issue truly is.
Blackgrass has become a big problem for the farm and with the weeds’ ability to produce very large numbers of viable seeds on an annual basis, it won’t be going away any time soon without help from herbicide control.
In response to our blackgrass problem, we’ve widened our rotation and grow competitive, fast growing wheat varieties, such as Champion.
By regularly monitoring my crops to identify patches of weeds early, it helps me act to control them through chemical applications or hand rouging.
We apply a robust herbicide programme including flufenacet, diflufenican and pendimethalin to help control the weed, and hand-rogue depending on labour availability.
When it comes to spray timings, we particularly focus on T1, T2 and T3. We don’t tend to do T0 timings as this is more dependable on our crop variety choice.
Case Study
Farm Facts
Location: Wimborne St Giles, Dorset
Arable hectares: 1,130 hectares
Average cereal hectarage: Wheat – 400 ha / Winter and spring barley 350 ha
Soil type: Light chalky soils with some clay caps
Crops in rotation: Winter OSR, winter wheat (milling and feed), winter and spring barley (malting), peas, naked oats, beans and cover crops
Fertiliser regime: VRA inorganic fertilisers which are solid, also using sludge and digitise
Grass weed issue: Blackgrass
Andy’s top tips for tackling blackgrass?
Get your blackgrass tested for resistance
Make a traffic light system for each field on blackgrass pressure
Use spring cropping in the rotation