Do both!
By what percentage have cover crops increased the bottom line of your business?
- Thread starter Pilatus
- Start date
R U "well known " Clive !!!!!!!
beltextexel
Member
- Location
- Scorton, North Yorkshire
If anyone would like to earn some money back from their cover crops, please get in touch! We’re always on the look out for crops to winter sheep on!
Rainfall was the reason agreed by everyone involved here for the failure of two decades of diligent research which came with a considerable amount of financial investment from us.
To be more precise, it was the high rainfall combined with our difficult soil types - the shales tended to improve every year but the clays never did.
Alternatively, of course, it might have been that my management skills were just not up to it and that everyone involved was far too polite to tell that to me face to face.
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Our soils team are running a free webinar on the use of cover crops to reduce over-winter nitrate leaching losses and the impact on cash crop yields. Might be a good chance to ask a soil scientist what they think would be worth doing in your situation? https://www.adas.uk/News/webinar-cover-crops-research-into-practice
We're currently very busy putting in WW after SO harvested 10 days or so ago.
yellow belly
Member
- Location
- south west lincolnshire
Stewardship pays £114 Per ha for an overwinter cover
leaving spring cropping land without a cover wastes the free nitrogen over the winter
this year volunteers may mop some up
leaving spring cropping land without a cover wastes the free nitrogen over the winter
this year volunteers may mop some up
Webinar good
time of day, are you having a laugh, we're not all in the position to have our employee's out in the fields while we watch with a cuppa
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simonk88
Member
- Location
- Lincolnshire Wolds
I get what you mean about some soil types, we have some high mg clay and it works well on that! Yes I would have a go, I don't see why what we do would fail anyway. Hoping you get a dry autumn and winter so that 4t/ac crop survives and yields, isn't that risky in itself? I don't really mind what you do on your farm, I'm just commenting our experiences across the soil types we farm. I wouldn't try and drill a clay soil 'on the green' in spring time, and just putting a cover crop in with a disc drill in autumn doesn't work here, yet.
simonk88
Member
- Location
- Lincolnshire Wolds
Yes we do, and catch crops
- Location
- Bedfordshire
Thanks for the alternative/complementary view to Clive's
It does work on heavier soil. But the management of the cover crop and drilling is often very different to what Clive would do on his lighter soils. I know Clive is a big mustard fan which from experience where on heavy simply produces more slugs.
- Location
- Fife
Beat me to it!
- Location
- Essex
Look up carbon dating which aims to match up forage with graziers.Beat me to it!
Chae1
Member
- Location
- Aberdeenshire
It depends on the gap between harvest and cold weather. Nothing seems to get time to establish up here.
They make sense in my opinion. The plants covering the bare stubble, protecting it from compaction from rain. Harvesting the winter sunshine, keeping the soil dry. Organic matter from incorporating green vegetation and roots.
Just never had any success personally.
I would rather sow a forage crop after winter barley and strip graze it over winter personally.
You can watch it on catch up.....Webinar good
That's alright then
How ?
Here is one way to make £1000 / acre from a cover crop........
www.itv.com
The stunning sunflower field raising thousands for kidney research | ITV News
Thousands of people came to visit a Somerset field planted with seven million sunflowers, raising more than £34,000 for Kidney Research UK | ITV News West Country
www.itv.com
No worries - we will send a recording of it afterwards to everyone who has registered.Webinar good
