I’m a big fan of cover crops – but I regret selecting them as an ACRES option

Last week I finally decided to turn the cows and calves out to grass. The sun was shining, there was a good drying breeze and I couldn’t face yet another round of bedding and feeding, especially with straw getting scarce.

The lower half of the farm is still saturated, but the hill is dry enough to graze, and the combination of small groups of cows and sheep spread out in numerous fields is allowing me to finally reduce the daily yard work.

Normally by this time of year the sheds have been cleaned out and a significant portion of the slurry has been spread on the fields intended for first-cut silage.

It has been a long winter, and the sheds are still full of dung and the tanks are full of slurry. However, having sheds full of organic manures is positive; it is a valuable resource.

I finally managed to get started on ploughing for spring cereals, only to get stopped by yet more rain.

So far, the easiest fields to plough have been those with actively growing cover-crops. Traditionally, we always sowed stubble turnips after the harvest for grazing sheep during the winter.

I selected cover crops as an option in ACRES, and a mix of fodder-rape and leafy turnips were sown in the majority of the fields identified for the scheme.

Last year’s changes to the rules regarding dates for grazing, cross-compliance and buffer-strips, combined with poor weather, forced me to house the ewes earlier than normal.

In hindsight, I regret selecting cover crops as an action. I dislike the idea of leaving fields unproductive for long periods over the winter.

If I hadn’t committed to the cover crops action in the scheme, I would still have grown them, but for March-lambing ewes, I need to be able to start grazing crops in December. Starting to graze in January is too late, unless I were to move to April lambing.

All the cover crops were sown on the same day, but this year I used a different mix containing vetch, phacelia and clover in two fields which weren’t targeted for grazing.

After a slow start, despite the wet winter, the clover in particular thrived, which meant that I had to top the crop before ploughing. Even after all the rain we’ve had, the soil was nice and loose to plough.

The kale and leafy turnips performed poorly over the winter, and clearly suffered in the wet and cold conditions. Crops were thin and light, which only supported a quick graze by the sheep.

The soil on the fields grazed has been tight, and much harder to plough.

It hasn’t stopped raining for long enough yet, but in between the showers it looks like the vetch, phacelia and clover fields will be ready to sow a few days earlier than the grazed fodder-rape and leafy turnip.

With May looming, I could do with getting some of the barley and oat crops into the ground as soon as possible. It will be interesting to see how the spring barley performs after the two differently managed cover crops.

I had thought that by grazing the cover crops, the nutrients in the dung produced by the sheep would be readily available for the following crop. Will the ploughed-in clover give the same result, or a better one?