Making the most of stubble

The benefits of stubble are often overlooked in modern farming, but you can help to make it a post-harvest haven for wildlife

Pheasants and partridges just love stubble. They can rake about easily, scoffing the gleanings, pecking at odd weeds and even chasing after big, succulent insects like daddy longlegs.

With the cut stems offering cover up to just about head height, they feel much safer than when out on a fully open field. From the keeper’s point of view, this can bring a nightmare time of straying and endless work dogging them back. But, on the other hand, stubble can help you to hold birds that would otherwise be looking for somewhere more comfortable, over the boundary.

Given the opportunity to develop naturally, stubble can be a real wildlife haven, offering a valuable post-harvest habitat to a wide range of species. The flush of weeds that follows along after the combine has gone offers a pollen and nectar resource for late-summer insects, particularly hoverflies and some of the later butterflies. Then, as their seeds set, there is a selection of food for farmland birds such as linnets, yellowhammers, goldfinches and corn buntings.

To get the best from stubbles it is therefore clear that applying weedkillers is a bad plan. Twenty years or so ago, it became routine for stubble to be sprayed off with a broad spectrum herbicide (usually glyphosate) in late autumn. The main aim here is to kill off what are known as volunteers – the newly growing crop plants from seed spilled at harvest – to avoid risk of carrying over plant diseases.

I have a feeling that these days this is less popular and I assume that nutrient conservation may have something to do with it. A green cover locks up fertility, resulting in less nitrate and other fertiliser leaching into groundwater, and farmers are under increasing pressure over this.

Whatever, post-harvest herbicide spraying is a bad idea for game and broader conservation. Aside from the loss of both the volunteers and the weeds, it seems to kill all attractiveness to wildlife. Stubbles that were buzzing become eerily quiet almost before the green cover dies.

Sadly, today’s stubbles seem to get less and less weedy. Modern crop growing gets progressively more efficient and both the number of weeds and the range of species is declining. There is less spilt corn, too, so whereas stubbles were once green with weeds and volunteers, they seem to be far patchier these days.

“Post-harvest herbicide spraying is a bad idea for game and broader conservation”

However, there are ways to enhance them that you might consider.

The key first thing is to liaise with the farm manager. You may discover that there is a plan to plant a green, manure-type catch crop, which will do things for you anyway. Also, there is no point setting about enhancing a stubble that is due for cultivation and sowing to a winter crop in a few weeks.

What you need to know is which fields are due to stand in stubble over winter for sowing next spring. So, in my own case, I know that all