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!

 

Leam Farmers Support Pesticide substitution Trials

Regular water quality monitoring in the catchment shows that a number of pesticides used in agricultural practices are showing up at Severn Trent Water (STW) Water Treatment Works in Leamington Spa at 4x, 7x or even 10x the Drinking Water Standard and as a result are breaching European Regulation. For pesticides this standard is 0.1ug/l.  This is a challenging target but one which reflects the thought that pesticides should not be found in the water environment. 

To add to this, some pesticides such as metaldehyde found in slug pellets can not be easily removed and is therefore still present in drinking water (although not harmful).

If we continue to breach the standard, there’s a danger of metaldehyde being withdrawn from the market and this could happen quickly. Loss of metaldehyde could have a serious impact on the profitability of a range of crops, including oilseed rape and second wheat following oilseed rape, or even result in the total loss of rape from the market completely.

 

 

 Leam Catchment Sampling locations

So what are we doing to help the situation?

Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) are working very closely with 2 local agronomists – Jeremy White and Richard Clarke to trial a ferric-phosphate based product (SLUXX) on their clients farms for a season.  So with thanks to Richard Wright at Bridge Barn Farm, Hunningham; Alastair McGregor at Weston Hall Farm, Weston-under-Weatherly; and Harry Johnson of Red House Farm, Leamington Spa for happily agreeing to trail this product.

SLUXX is manufactured by Certis and is an effective molluscicide approved for the control of slugs. It works in the same manner as metaldehyde-based products in that slugs ingest the product and die within 3-6 days; however it contains ferric-phosphate and no metaldehyde so it can be easily removed from water.  Also, the product has shown in previous trials that it is more effective at killing slugs than metaldehyde.

 

What can farmers and advisors do to help?

·         Follow the blog to see how our trial plots fair against the slugs this autumn and winter.

·         Speak to your agronomist and consider trialling ferric-phosphate based products on your own farm.

·         If you are still using metaldehyde then ensure that you or your contractor has completed the PA4S slug pellet application training. CSF can provide pesticide training free of charge; you just have to pay for your test. Please call Melissa Hoskings for more details on 07557 338642.

·         Every user of metaldehyde slug pellets MUST adhere to best practise. The Metaldehyde Stewardship Best Practise guidelines can be found here