New Metaldehyde Guidelines Workshop & Farm Walk

 Monday 16th June 2014 

4pm – 6.30pm

Warden Hill Farm, 

Chipping Warden, Banbury, 

OX17 1AJ

Catchment Sensitive Farming have organised a workshop and farm walk to explain the new guidelines for Metaldehyde Stewardship in the Leam catchment.  It’s important that farmers support the voluntary approach to metaldehyde use in order to reduce the risks of future restrictions. 

The walk will explain more about the guidance, what it means for farmers and discuss options for how to continue farming profitably. 

The workshop will include:
More about the new programme
What to do if you have land in a ‘high risk’ area
Find out about alternatives 1^st-hand from farmers that have used them
Agronomists discuss Seedbed Management
Certis talk on alternative products, costs and how they work

    Metaldehyde Stewardship Group on-hand

Followed by a farm walk:
Look at some trial plots using SLUXX
Look at a sediment pond used for reducing pesticide movement to the river

 We shall finish with a hot meal, pudding, and a refreshing Drink!!

Time: 4pm – 6.30pm

Location: Warden Hill Farm, Chipping Warden, Banbury, 

OX17 1AJ.

To book your FREE place and food, please contact:

Melissa Hoskings on 07584 569429, email Melissa@severnriverstrust.com

This event will be registered for BASIS & NROSO Points

Grassland Improvement & Weed Control

Wednesday 27^th February

By kind permission of Mark Warner, Hill Farm, Watergall.

This practical event provides an opportunity to gain a better understanding of grassland management and weed control on your farm. We will cover various aspects of grassland management and soil structure with the objective of notably increasing the productive capacity of grassland.

Leading the event will be:

Charlie Morgan – GrassMaster Ltd

Will Corrigan – DowAgroSciences

Andrew Griffiths – SCS Spreader & Sprayer Testing Ltd

Areas covered will be:

• Soil - the most valuable resource on your farm!
• Compaction – deep soil compaction from machinery pans can reduce crop yields by 10%
• Sward assessment – looking in detail at the sward and whether this is providing sufficient forage requirements for your livestock.
• Weed Control - docks, thistles, rushes
• Machinery calibration – getting this right can save you money and increase yields considerably.
• Machinery demonstration - grass harrow and over seeder / aerator

Time: 10.30am – 2.30pm

Location: Hill Farm, Watergall, Southam, Warks, CV47 2XP

Refreshments and lunch will be provided during the workshop

To book a place please contact Melissa on 07557 338642 or email Melissa@severnriverstrust.com

Red House Farm: SLUXX pellets are a success and metaldehyde field suffers

So after a very hard 4 months of continuous rain and an incessant number of slugs we have come out the other end with some very successful results. Our predominantly SLUXX field has managed very well and there is a relatively good crop of oilseed rape establishing (considering the late drilling and poor conditions).  The crop in this field is looking full and healthy (see photo below). A stark contrast to this is the oilseed rape crop in the predominantly metaldehyde field, which has almost all been eaten by slugs with only a few small seedlings remaining (see below). 

Winter oilseed rape in field 2.
Predominantly applied with SLUXX

Winter oilseed rape in field 1.
Predominantly applied with metaldehyde

The graph below illustrates the amount of leaf damage to the crop in the 2 fields over the last 4 months.   The amount of leaf damage on the oilseed rape crop was fairly similar for both fields until the end of October. However, leaf damage in field 1 (applied predominantly with metaldehyde) increased dramatically after October, with 80-90% leaf damage being recorded. By early November the majority of the crop in field 1 had been eaten by slugs. The crop in field 2 (appled predominantly with SLUXX) however, remained strong and healthy.

Regular water quality samples from the field drains reveal that the concentration of metaldehyde from field 1 (predominantly metaldehyde) has continuously exceeded the drinking water standard (DWS) of 0.1 µg/L with a maximum concentration of 28.9 µg/L found during the first sampling event, which is 289 times greater than the DWS. Field 2 which was applied with predominantly SLUXX has exceeded the DWS on 4 occasions, but only by a small amount (see graph below). 

Food for thought

This is great news for farming and water quality showing that if farmers use more SLUXX in their fields they can have trust that the product works effectively and has an efficacy potentially better than metaldehyde based pellets. Also, using more SLUXX will help to reduce metaldehyde peaks and help prevent future restrictions.

Red House Farm: Leaf damage to oilseed rape seedlings starts off relatively high

Early October saw the first of the oilseed rape crop appear on the trial plots at Red House Farm. With high rainfall over the summer we knew that slug pressure on the crop would be fierce and wanted to make sure that we kept a close eye on the crop as it developed. 

The first sampling event revealed what we expected, with relatively high levels of leaf damage on the seedling crop straight away.  The first sampling event revealed average % leaf damage was 19% on the metaldehyde applied areas of the crop and up to an average of 29% on the SLUXX applied areas.  This was not an encouraging start. 

Quadrat used to assess leaf damage

Leaf damage in metaldehyde applied crop

Leaf damage in metaldehyde applied crop

Leaf damage in SLUXX applied crop

How to beat resistant black-grass issues talk

Red House Farm: Cloddy Seed beds & 3.5 Inches of rain

Cultivating the land at Red House Farm has been really hard this year.  The usual application of “min-till” to all the fields has completely gone out the window as the heavy wet clay soils make this technique impossible to apply. Two fields of Oilseed Rape were finally drilled in early September although continuous rainfall has resulted in a wet cloddy seed bed rife with slugs.  

The Cloddy Seed bed

 

The rain gauge we’ve installed at the farm recorded a staggering 92.8mm (3.5 Inches) of rain falling between the end of August and the beginning of October!  

With the seed beds drilled, the next task was to apply SLUXX to the fields to ward off the slugs from eating too many oilseed rape seeds.  Two fields are being trialled with SLUXX at the farm – “Hawthorns” a 9.1ha field received an application of SLUXX around the headlands and the first 3 tramlines and the rest of the field received an application of 1.5% metaldehyde pellets; whilst “1325” a 6.87ha field received an application of SLUXX throughout the field apart from a small strip up the middle. I’ll be looking at the amount of leaf damage on the crops in both fields and looking at the variation of leaf damage between rape growing in areas that have received metaldehyde slug pellets and those that have received SLUXX.  I’ll be also taking water samples from the drains to look at how much metaldehyde is running off the fields and into the River Leam which flows along the boundary of the farm.

Hopefully SLUXX has got what it takes to ward off the slugs!!

Red House Farm: Finally, August brought some sun to start harvesting

Finally we had a week of semi-dry weather in late August to allow the barley to be harvested from the fields at Red House Farm.  Despite this short spell of sunshine, it wasn’t enough to dry out some patches where the heavy clay soils had become completely waterlogged which meant that machinery was getting stuck left, right and centre.  Harvesting was abandoned in the hope that more sun may come along and dry out the ground before finishing the rest.

Half Harvested Field at Red House Farm

Just over 3 weeks later and finally the ground was suitable for harvesting the rest of the barley. Although it still wasn’t an easy job with heavy machinery on the wet soils making the process very time intensive. This resulted in Alastair working all hours to try and get the crop off here and at his own farm whilst the conditions were still suitable. But he managed it!