SDOP NEWSLETTER
August 2007
General crop comments
At least we at last had some dryer weather to catch up with all the planting and weeding.
Despite using the ‘stale seed bed’ technique weed numbers seem to be particularly high this year and keep emerging! The standard of hand weeding between the students this year has also been very variable! Any ideas how we can improve weeding efficiency? I have tried this year going very early at the cotyledon stage but the students haven’t been able to distinguish spurry from carrots and have not been able to see the docks as same colour as soil. With later weeding many have been unable to pull weeds including their roots!
Crop maturity does not appear to be going according to plan. I know in our carrots we wanted to plant some of the drilling dates earlier than Riverford directed on this windy exposed farm - now our carrot crop is about 2 weeks behind schedule! When we visited Andy’s crops they were much further forward compared with ours drilled at the same time. I am all for taking a more scientific approach to planting dates but I think more account should be taken of altitude, aspect and fertility/amounts FYM applied. I think it is probably harder to plan accurately in organic compared with conventional crops.
Given the high rainfall this summer it is likely that much of the available nitrogen has been leached or washed deeper into the soil. It has been observed that shallow manure application improved calabrese growth compared with ploughed in manure.
This has been a difficult year for some crops with very disappointing results. If there is a shortage it will be interesting to see how/if Riverford prices change. Will we get to see £500/t for potatoes in the spring if few potato crops are able to store until the spring?

The worry of Foot and Mouth is still hanging over us. Lets hope it stays in the east otherwise there may be major implications in staff and machinery movement between our farms.

Pest of the month

We have not been catching any leek moths in our traps, which is a good sign. Unfortunately small white butterfly caterpillars are devastating our cabbages. Just waiting for a sprayer to apply a dose of BT (Bacillus thuringiensis). The small white is often difficult to see as it lies along cabbage veins and is the same colour.



At the last members meeting David Savage showed everyone the very good control of flea beetle in his Swedes by covering with fleece for several weeks

Technical Meetings

The next technical meeting will be on Wednesday 22 August at Pete Wastenage - Tidwell Barton
6.00.p.m.

Date for the diary
Wednesday 19 September , all day visit to Norton (the new Riverford site in Wilts/Hants) and the local suppliers

07.00 Depart Wash
en-route breakfast stop
11.00 Lymington - (Cauli, leeks, failed squash and sweet corn)
1.00 Winnall - Duncan Janaways (leeks and potatoes)
3.00 Laverstoke (composting and soil analysis lab)
5.00 Norton (packhouse)
8 - 9.00 arrive Wash

Machinery

SDOP investment in extra planting capacity has paid dividends this year. We have managed to catch up in most areas as soon as conditions have allowed. The more favoured Pelican planters have performed well under the difficult circumstances.

Several members have different preferences for hand weeding hoes, maybe we can all bring our favourites to demonstrate and discuss at the next meeting on Wednesday?

Staff matters

Many of the foreign workers will be going home at the end of August. We will be looking at some of the carrot and leek crops to make sure we don’t need any more weeding before we let them go.

Members will be asked to complete forms on permanent staff – for bonuses this autumn

At the last farm meeting there was a very good discussion with Jeremy about staff motivation and techniques for increasing speed of crop bunching. For those of you who weren’t able to attend the comments made were as follows

• To increase student motivation one option may be to only offer overtime to those who work most effectively.

• There are various methods for putting elastic bands around crop bunches. One method that is particularly effective in carrots is as shown in pictures. Using this method of looping round a few carrots can be a quicker method than looping twice over the leaves.
Bunching carrots

Hold elastic band in thumb and first 2 fingers around base of leaves.

Pull one end through other end

and loop over 2 or 3 carrots

Finished 400g bunch
Russian word of the month!


Thank you … Spasibo


Alison Samuel/Ian Noble August2007