Welcome to the eighth instalment of our Know your Soils series sharing practical tips for monitoring the soil health on your land. Keep an eye out for our bitesize videos and fact sheets on simple tests you can do yourself on farm.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
Try 3 easy soil tests to understand your soil health
After almost a year of supporting farmers with soil testing, the Sectormentor For Soils team share insights on empowering farmers to monitor and build soil...
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Direct Driller Magazine
Direct Driller is a new farming magazine, designed by farmers for farmers to educate and inform the industry about no-till techniques
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Welcome to the seventh instalment of our Know your Soils series sharing practical tips for monitoring the soil health on your land. Keep an eye out for our bitesize videos and fact sheets on simple tests you can do yourself on farm.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
How much biological activity is there in your soil?
Based on an AHDB GREATsoils video created by Soil Association and Earthcare Technical
The soil respiration test is a way to measure how much biological...
Welcome to the fifth instalment of our Know your Soils series sharing practical tips for monitoring the soil health on your land. Keep an eye out for our bitesize videos and fact sheets on simple tests you can do yourself on farm.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
Can your soil hold nutrients effectively?
A video from the ‘Learning from the Land’ series created by Catchment Sensitive Farming &Innovation for Agriculture
Earlier in the series, we discussed how rainwater can...
For everyone who has already signed up, the final batch of Direct Driller Magazine Issue 3s have been collated to be sent out. All subscriptions will be from Issue 4 onwards now.
If you would like an Issue 3, 2 or 1 these can be bought here:
https://www.marketplace.farm/direct-driller-magazine/
Welcome to the sixth instalment of our Know your Soils series sharing practical tips for monitoring the soil health on your land. Keep an eye out for our bitesize videos and fact sheets on simple tests you can do yourself on farm.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
The best books for learning about soil health
Book recommendations and where to buy them from a fantastic lineup of soil health experts and enthusiasts!
As the Autumn evenings begin to draw in why not stock up on...
THIRD ANNUAL GROUNDSWELL SHOW ILLUSTRATES THE PARADIGM SHIFT TOWARDS MORE CONSERVATIONMINDED FARMING PRACTICES
The third annual Groundswell No-Till Show and Conference took place at Lannock Manor Farm on 27th and 28th June at Lannock Manor Farm attended by over 1,200 farmers, landowners and other delegates with a shared interest in soil health. The theme of the conference was health, the idea being that health is fundamental for soil, plants and the humans and animals that survive off the...
A PERFECT YEAR FOR EFFECTIVE STUBBLE MANAGEMENT
Stubble management is an essential part of any efficient, sustainable, profitable crop production system and conditions this season have been perfect to maximise the benefits. Jeff Claydon, who farms in Suffolk and designed the Claydon OptiTill® System, explains why.
Stubble management is an essential part of any efficient, sustainable, profitable crop production system and conditions this season have been perfect to maximise the benefits...
Know Your Soils #4: How to capture carbon in your soil
Welcome to the fourth instalment of our Know your Soils series sharing practical tips for monitoring the soil health on your land. Keep an eye out for our bitesize videos and fact sheets on simple tests you can do yourself on farm.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
“If you want to capture carbon, you have to think like carbon!”
A special short episode of Farmerama Radio, a podcast sharing the voices of smaller scale...
HORSCH PRONTO NT EXPANDS SEED DRILL FAMILY
Available in 6m, 8m and 9m working widths, the Horsch Pronto NT features the well-proven TurboDisc doubledisc coulter at 20cm row spacing in combination with a compact, leading wavy disc, making it ideal for low disturbance drilling and direct seeding.
Operational speeds up to 20kph allow for a high area output even at smaller working widths. Horsepower requirement is very low as the wavy discs cut through organic material and cultivate the soil...
ALTERNATIVE WEED CONTROL - A WORLD WITHOUT GLYPHOSATE BUT WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?
Written by Maxime Barbier. First Published in TCS Magazine N°97 in March 2018
With the list of agrochemicals that is available to agriculture constantly shrinking and a threat hanging over the use of glyphosate, there is a growing interest more and more in alternative weeding solutions. All over the world many alternatives are being investigated; electricity, microwaves, thermal foam, water jet and bio...
CHOOSING BETWEEN DIRECT DRILLING OPENERS
Written by Dr C John Baker, Feilding, NZ
If you want to start a pub debate amongst farmers, try telling them which direct drilling (no-tillage) opener is the best. Everyone has an opinion. Here are some of the problems that direct drilling openers have to cope with, plus summaries of what published science and field practice tells us about how close each generic opener type comes to fulfilling those functions. This is an opportunity to sort fact...
FEATURED FARMER DAVID WHITE - HAWK MILL FARMS
Farming 160ha of combinable crops on light “boys” land over chalk between Cambridge and Newmarket, I’ve just had my third direct drilled harvest. I’m 100% combinable having been a sugar beet grower since the days of hand hoeing as well as offering a drilling and harvesting service with a 6 row tanker in the past, I have since stopped growing beet when I wanted to start direct drilling. All crops types are grown for premium markets and are...
SOIL ORGANIC MATTER AND ITS ROLE IN CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION
Written by Mark Measures BSc. (Hons.), IOTA (Accredited), ARAgS, Churchill Fellow 2017 of the Organic Research Centre, first Published July 2018
Soil organic matter (SOM) is the focus of much attention in both organic farming and conventional circles; conventional arable farmers have finally woken up to the fact that SOM is important and that poor rotations and lack of organic matter inputs might be something to do with their...
INTRODUCTIONS
Mike Donovan - Editor - Direct Driller Magazine
THE CHALLENGES OF NO-TILL
No-till remains the most exciting, and challenging, development in global farming today. My six years of continuous and enthusiastic journalism on the subject has come at a time of an ever-increasing flow of information.
For notillers and those contemplating it, knowledge is essential. However there’s another challenge: getting information into the world of farm supplies and also farm education...
For all those on the mailing list, Direct Driller Issue 3 was sent to digitally on the 20th June. It can be read here and you will see it has grown to 100 pages, which is where we expect it to stay going forward.
https://issuu.com/directdriller/docs/direct_driller_magazine_issue_3
All the magazines will be delivered to the office tomorrow and we will be getting them back in the post as quickly as possible, so expect them this week to start hitting doorsteps.
Contents of Issue 3...
Welcome to the third instalment of our new 12 part Know your Soils series sharing practical tips for monitoring the soil health on your land. Keep an eye out for our bitesize videos and fact sheets on simple tests you can do yourself on farm.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
How much topsoil and nutrients do you lose with rain water run-off?
A video from the ‘Learning from the Land’ series created by Catchment Sensitive Farming & Innovation for Agriculture
This is a...
FARMERS GET TO SEE SKY DRILL IN ACTION AT COLLEGE FARM OPEN DAY
At the recent 4th Sky Roadshow on 22nd May, farmers got to see the Sky’s EasyDrill (imported from France by Opico since 2015) in action on a trial site at College Farm, Nr Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. College Farm combines 100ha of arable with 20ha of grass grazed by the farm’s pedigree Suffolk sheep. The trials here are currently into their second year.
Various cropping sequences and cover crops are being trialled and the...
Direct Seeding Experience With 16 years’ pioneering successful direct seeding in over 30 different countries with the patented Claydon technique, we are now seeing the return of old technology systems that were first seen in the 70s. Interestingly this old technology lost favour then due to inconsistency of results and has a track record feared by many who are considering entering into direct seeding technology. With the right soil and weather, and combined with a high level of patience and...
ROLLING COVER CROPS - A RICH TECHNIQUE OF OPPORTUNITIES WITH MUCH STILL TO MASTER
Written by Matthieu ARCHAMBEAUD, TCS Magazine No 64 September/October 2011
The research institute Agroscope of Changins in Switzerland (Canton of Vaud) has been conducting a trial since 1969 with four different types of tillage and since 1976 also comparing various forms of fertilization and plant cover. The results that have been learned so far are proving to be a very valuable insight for all farming...
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Tractor Chat #01
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Tractor Chat #01 - with Direct Driller Magazine Farmer Focus writer Phil Rowbottom
Discussing direct drilling wheat, Oil seed rape growing in the UK, Fendt 724 tractor and his Sky Easy Drill.
Discussing direct drilling wheat, Oil seed rape growing in the UK, Fendt 724 tractor and his Sky Easy Drill.