Peat & Moss soils

Phil P

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
North West
I just don’t understand this. Barley, especially spring is the last crop I would grow on black land. I know you call it moss but it looks no different in that photo where you were drilling
What would you suggest? Every time someone has put any sort of root/veg crop on there it’s cost us more to repair the damage to the ground/drains than we’ve made! I won’t let anyone on any of my land (not just the moss) with spuds or carrots now. The damage they do to the soil just isn’t worth it!
 

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
What would you suggest? Every time someone has put any sort of root/veg crop on there it’s cost us more to repair the damage to the ground/drains than we’ve made! I won’t let anyone on any of my land (not just the moss) with spuds or carrots now. The damage they do to the soil just isn’t worth it!
Fair enough. It obviously works for you, I don’t want to tell you what to do! Generally we would find that veg makes the least mess of black land than any other type. There must be subtle differences between yours and mine. And you simply couldn’t afford to grow cereals on it as the margins for veg are so much greater. And the only cereal would be winter wheat, generally late drilled. I think your land must not drain as well as most of the black in the fens.
 

Kidds

Member
Horticulture
Don’t you wrap the pipes?
It was over 40 years ago when last done and I had no say or thoughts on the matter. The pipes weren’t wrapped and not sure there was anything readily available to wrap them with back then.
I recently sold the worst bit and the new owner likes it as it is. Tbh it is a nicer place than when it was cropped and no bugger wants the crops at a sensible price anyway.
 

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
My Dad who went to college in Lancashire says Moss land is just black fen but in the west where they get more rainfall. Hence the ability to grow spring corn without it drying up.
Spring barley would get every trace element deficiency known to man here , fall over and not make malting spec. Combining it would send you completely mental as all that would happen is it will bulldoze. Not fun at all.
 

Phil P

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
North West
:X3:o_O:banghead: Good luck.
I think timing is more important than luck when your dealing with moss land, you just can’t rush it!
Admittedly though as you say, trying to pick flat corn up is no fun at all?. However we generally give our moss 20 units of N less than any other soil types which seems to keep it standing. Cutting after dusk is still a no, no, even in a standing crop though.

Think I may have actually just gained another 30ac of moss land of a contracting customer who’s having a reshuffle and wants to rent it out, I must be mad ??
 

Hesstondriver

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Huntingdon
i do love it when people say farming black land (Fen / Peat etc) is easy !

1) it can blow, dykes and roads full of soil.
2) if it blows it can take young seedlings with it
3) it can be so bl@@dy springy it is impossible to consolidate so pushes and bulldozes with any form of cultivator
4) when its wet its very wet , when its dry its very dry and also hard to make wet again with irrigation
5) you get weird iron deposits blocking field drains
6) on some you can peel up virgin peat with the plough , causing nightmares with veg planters ( fen boys call it Bear's muck)
7) any straw crop tends to fall over, then you basically push it to one end of the field with the combine because the roots dont hold in to the ground !
8) Bog oaks that appear from nowhere, one year is fine - next year a box of plough shear bolts , followed by the need for a digger
9) pockets of blue clay that just appear in the middle of a field
10) in a good wheat growing year the black will yield average, in a bad year it will do the same.
11) you can't have light coloured carpets in your house, it gets every where


@Flat 10 , @Adeptandy how many of these can you tick off ??
 

Bogweevil

Member
I suppose it would be no good suggesting celery? God, how I love proper fen celery. With some cheese, and a drop of pickle, salt too. Come out like dwarf sticks of wood round here.

854643
 

Lowland1

Member
Mixed Farmer
i do love it when people say farming black land (Fen / Peat etc) is easy !

1) it can blow, dykes and roads full of soil.
2) if it blows it can take young seedlings with it
3) it can be so bl@@dy springy it is impossible to consolidate so pushes and bulldozes with any form of cultivator
4) when its wet its very wet , when its dry its very dry and also hard to make wet again with irrigation
5) you get weird iron deposits blocking field drains
6) on some you can peel up virgin peat with the plough , causing nightmares with veg planters ( fen boys call it Bear's muck)
7) any straw crop tends to fall over, then you basically push it to one end of the field with the combine because the roots dont hold in to the ground !
8) Bog oaks that appear from nowhere, one year is fine - next year a box of plough shear bolts , followed by the need for a digger
9) pockets of blue clay that just appear in the middle of a field
10) in a good wheat growing year the black will yield average, in a bad year it will do the same.
11) you can't have light coloured carpets in your house, it gets every where


@Flat 10 , @Adeptandy how many of these can you tick off ??
My great grandfather who farmed proper grade one silt apparently would visit every year after harvest when he would tell my grandfather and father that they worked twice as hard for half as much as he did. But if you can farm the black stuff then you can probably farm anything. I am still getting used to stuff that sticks together, doesn't blow away and isn't flat.
 

Bogweevil

Member
i do love it when people say farming black land (Fen / Peat etc) is easy !

1) it can blow, dykes and roads full of soil.
2) if it blows it can take young seedlings with it
3) it can be so bl@@dy springy it is impossible to consolidate so pushes and bulldozes with any form of cultivator
4) when its wet its very wet , when its dry its very dry and also hard to make wet again with irrigation
5) you get weird iron deposits blocking field drains
6) on some you can peel up virgin peat with the plough , causing nightmares with veg planters ( fen boys call it Bear's muck)
7) any straw crop tends to fall over, then you basically push it to one end of the field with the combine because the roots dont hold in to the ground !
8) Bog oaks that appear from nowhere, one year is fine - next year a box of plough shear bolts , followed by the need for a digger
9) pockets of blue clay that just appear in the middle of a field
10) in a good wheat growing year the black will yield average, in a bad year it will do the same.
11) you can't have light coloured carpets in your house, it gets every where


@Flat 10 , @Adeptandy how many of these can you tick off ??

Interesting, I understood about half of the UK's Grade One soil was found in peaty fens? Sounds like this no longer so.
 

Lowland1

Member
Mixed Farmer
https://www.greatfen.org.uk/

Would you consider rewilding if the question were asked. Peat degradation maybe one of the UK major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Possibly payments in future to remove from agriculture, rewet and return to Fen.
Around us several hundred acres have been converted to wildlife habitat by digging a few ponds and putting cattle on it. It's an absolute disgrace. It looks rubbish and hasn't really encouraged any wildlife. It's just easy money for the land owners i won't call them farmers because they aren't.
 

Hesstondriver

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Huntingdon
The Holme Fen post :

Holme Fen, specifically Holme Posts, is believed to be the lowest land point in Great Britain at 2.75 metres (9.0 ft) below sea level.[9][10]
Before drainage, the fens contained many shallow lakes, of which Whittlesey Mere was one of the largest. The River Nene originally flowed through this mere, then south to Ugg Mere, before turning east towards the Ouse. By 1851, silting and peat expansion had reduced Whittlesey Mere to about 400-hectare (990-acre) and only a metre deep. In that year the mere disappeared, when new drains carried waters to a pumping station and up into Bevill's Leam. The drainage turned both the mere and the Holme Fen into usable farmland, but subsidence followed.
In anticipation of the ground subsidence, the landowner William Wells had an oak pile driven through the peat and firmly embedded in the underlying clay; he then cut the top level with the ground in 1851 and used it to monitor the peat subsidence. A few years later, the oak post was replaced by a cast-iron column (reputedly from The Crystal Palace building at The Great Exhibition of 1851), that was similarly founded on timber piles driven into the stable clay, with its top at the same level as the original post. This is the Holme Post that survives today. As it was progressively exposed it became unstable, and steel guys were added in 1957, when a second iron post was also installed 6 metres (20 ft) to the northeast. The post now rises 4 metres (13 ft) above the ground, and provides an impressive record of the ground subsidence; both posts are standing today.
Holme Fen is the largest Silver birch woodland in lowland Britain. It contains approximately 5 hectares of rare acid grassland and heath and a hectare of remnant raised bog, an echo of the habitat that would have dominated the area centuries ago. This is the most south-easterly bog of its type in Britain.
 

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quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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