Broccoli head from Spain priced 20p in supermarket.

[KnittyNorah]

Mmmm, I love sunflowers... And sunflower honey...

Although rape seed oil is my cooking oil of choice. I'm just looking out of my window and can see loads of yellow in the fields. I might cycle that way later, I just love the aroma of the flowers. Although I'd better take some antihistamines first...

A few years ago I grew a lot of sunflowers in the allotment I had when I lived in the village, as I'd got seeds on the allotment's account at a wholesaler, for a teacher friend, and even after she'd distributed enough for everyone at the school to have half a dozen plants, I still had loads left to grow.
Eventually I cut a big bunch of them and took them to a charity shop where I used to volunteer - and some of the volunteers found it hard to believe they were real, as they were so unfeasibly big. They ended up selling quite a lot of them in return for 'gold coin donations' and made about £20, I believe. They are such happy, cheerful flowers!

 

[T4tomo]

It's a bit of a shame as I quite like ploughing.

I imagine its quite satisfying, my Dad didn't really do arable bar some turnips, and was never I trusted with a plough.
I did like chain harrowing though, leaving pretty stripes.

 

[mudsticks]

I imagine its quite satisfying, my Dad didn't really do arable bar some turnips, and was never I trusted with a plough.
I did like chain harrowing though, leaving pretty stripes.

Yes it's like making brown corduroy out of a weedy patch..

If you get it right...

'Instant effect'..

Who doesn't like 'instant effect??'

 

[Pat "5mph"]

Probs a silly question, but why grow sunflowers as a cover crop? Aren't all fields in the growing season supposed to be full of eatable/sellable crops if you're a farmer?
Also, if you plant a cover crop like clover over winter, then you must till the land before planting the summer crop, yes?
So a cover crop suited for no dig would be your peas and beans? Broad beans maybe too?
In my wee garden, I leave some brassicas over winter, and I leave some autumn leaves/garden debris for insects to overwinter in. Of course, the slugs hide in there too

 

[mudsticks]

Probs a silly question, but why grow sunflowers as a cover crop? Aren't all fields in the growing season supposed to be full of eatable/sellable crops if you're a farmer?
Also, if you plant a cover crop like clover over winter, then you must till the land before planting the summer crop, yes?
So a cover crop suited for no dig would be your peas and beans? Broad beans maybe too?
In my wee garden, I leave some brassicas over winter, and I leave some autumn leaves/garden debris for insects to overwinter in. Of course, the slugs hide in there too

Because they're beautiful Pat..

And they give the soil a break from other species , add organic matter - because you don't remove the plant material as with a harvested crop ..


Things like undersown maize, the clover is drilled at the same time as the maize
the clover starts to come into its own after maize harvest..

Overwintering rye would do fine sown in autumn in Scotland,
To kill it off in the spring, just lay black plastic over it for two or three weeks and it will die down , and the worms will take it in, or plant through the residue left in place as a mulch , if you don't want to dig it in..

 

[gbb]

The sight of a 'fen blow' is quite sobering when you consider the soil being moved through the air.
Despite working 7 years in Chatteris, I only saw one but I'm sure there are many more and many tonnes of earth moved with each one. Now Reynard mentions it, it is a feature in places where the fields are way below the road level, id never considered why ?

 

[mudsticks]

The sight of a 'fen blow' is quite sobering when you consider the soil being moved through the air.
Despite working 7 years in Chatteris, I only saw one but I'm sure there are many more and many tonnes of earth moved with each one. Now Reynard mentions it, it is a feature in places where the fields are way below the road level, id never considered why ?

It's a major problem in agriculture world wide.

Continuous intensive arable - which of course includes intensive monocrop vegetables is a major cause of soil loss.

And without soil, we're stuffed.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...oil-acutely-degraded-due-to-agriculture-study

This is one reason why well managed grazing animals integrated into our ag systems are so useful, they build soil.

All the research, and practical experience points to more sensibly scaled, agroecological approaches, with more mixed cropping, and minimised tillage, being the sustainable way forward.

 

[T4tomo]

its one of the many issues that commerical farming as bastards like tesco etc driving down prices have caused and farms have had to go more specialised / larger / more productive.

way back when a farmer had a bit of everything, dairy, sheet, arable, stock raised for meat etc and field naturally got rotated. crop rotation and the benefits for the soil has been around since the middle ages or earlier.

but if you have a 1000 acres of wheat growing in East Anglia, then once the wheat is harvested you should plant a cover crop for the winter otherwise the soil quality diminishes and half the soil blows away.

I grew up on a small mixed hill farm, so most of the land was only suitable for grazing / hay making, but we did "move" the turnip / potato field every year, and I recall we'd also grow grazing kale for the dairy herd, I think that after we gave up bothering to try and grow our own oats as they never did that well.

 

[mudsticks]

its one of the many issues that commerical farming as bastards like tesco etc driving down prices have caused and farms have had to go more specialised / larger / more productive.

way back when a farmer had a bit of everything, dairy, sheet, arable, stock raised for meat etc and field naturally got rotated. crop rotation and the benefits for the soil has been around since the middle ages or earlier.

but if you have a 1000 acres of wheat growing in East Anglia, then once the wheat is harvested you should plant a cover crop for the winter otherwise the soil quality diminishes and half the soil blows away.

I grew up on a small mixed hill farm, so most of the land was only suitable for grazing / hay making, but we did "move" the turnip / potato field every year, and I recall we'd also grow grazing kale for the dairy herd, I think that after we gave up bothering to try and grow our own oats as they never did that well.

The lie is that bigger is better, and more 'productive' or even more 'efficient'

If you look at the levels of good nutrition coming off smaller mixed integrated farms it's actually more per yield hectare, less waste, and better quality food than larger industrialised operations.


Particularly when you factor in external consequences of that industrialised ag.

The inputs required, and pollution caused by those one hit monoculture yields are massive.

 

[Oldhippy]

This is a really excellent and informative thread.

 

[T4tomo]

There was quite a good item on country file a week or three back on more "natural" farming vs intensive & use of artificial fertilisers etc. the natural farming guy was getting almost as good a yields as Adam do-dah was, who was spending a fortune on nitrogen etc.

 

[mudsticks]

There was quite a good item on country file a week or three back on more "natural" farming vs intensive & use of artificial fertilisers etc. the natural farming guy was getting almost as good a yields as Adam do-dah was, who was spending a fortune on nitrogen etc.

Yup even when I was at ag' college in the late eighties and nearly all teaching materials were supplied by ICI, there was the occasional brave lecturer who would dare to mention lower input systems, and on farm nutrient recycling .

That and influence from other early adopters of organic methods , sent me down that 'alternative' path .
Much of which of course was age old wisdom, and observation of natural systems.

It works, it requires different skills and mindset, but it works.

Theres now the spectre of the biotech, and other industries trying to monetise the 'agroecological, and regenerative' way .
By coopting some of the language*, but not so much the ethos.

If you get it right, there's not much to sell us..
And that's why big ag which is associated with big chem, isn't so keen..

Not much to sell us.

*A bit like 'sustainable' got so over used, that it became meaningless.

 

[Reynard]

The sight of a 'fen blow' is quite sobering when you consider the soil being moved through the air.
Despite working 7 years in Chatteris, I only saw one but I'm sure there are many more and many tonnes of earth moved with each one. Now Reynard mentions it, it is a feature in places where the fields are way below the road level, id never considered why ?

i don't see nearly as many of them as I used to when I first moved out this way from that there Londinium (I'm a Cockney by birth), which is a good thing. I'd like to think it comes down to raised awareness of what causes them and changing farming practices accordingly.

We still do see the odd one in late winter and early spring, mainly when it's been very dry. Less so in the autumn months now.

They are not very nice to be caught cycling in. It's like cycling in a sand blaster, and the soil gets right into your skin.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Probs a silly question, but why grow sunflowers

Because they're beautiful Pat..

Also they bring in the bees/insects AND, if left, the birds (tits and finches) take the seeds during the winter. In my little patch I let them self seed from that bird activity and plant my veg around the up coming seedlings.

 

[mudsticks]

Also they bring in the bees/insects AND, if left, the birds (tits and finches) take the seeds during the winter. In my little patch I let them self seed from that bird activity and plant my veg around the up coming seedlings.

Yes I forgot to mention about it being such good forage food for pollinators..

The hives here are generally busy and full .
The hedges and windreaks are well populated with bats that feast on the bugs

And the sunflowers seed heads being food for overwintering birds.

There were large mixed bunches of finches that would fly up off them overwinter, whenever you went past

Almost like a murmuration of starlings..

Much of this bird and buglife provides pollination services for crops, and is part of the natural pest control, that gets on with sorting out any excessive populations of anything.

All that symbiosis takes a while to establish, if you've converted from a system that was heavily reliant on chemical controls, but after a bit, it just seems to self regulate.