Managing Grass in a Dry Year at Morayshire Monitor Farm

The upcoming meeting at Morayshire Monitor Farm will focus on how best to manage your grass in dry conditions.

Paddy Jack from DLF Seeds will be the main speaker at the event, which will be held at Corskie Farm near Garmouth on Tuesday 7 May. He will highlight grass varieties which cope best with low rainfall, and the group will tour fields which host farmer Iain Green reseeded last year with this aim in mind.

Project facilitator, Sam Stewart from SAC Consulting, explained: “A field was reseeded using three different grass mixtures, contained cocksfoot so we will be taking a look to see how that is doing. We haven’t had much rain here over winter or spring, and after last year’s drought we are keen to make sure we do what we can to cope in dry conditions.”

As well as covering how best to manage grass and grass varieties, Paddy will also discuss weed control on silage and grazing pastures and over seeding.

Monitor farmer Iain Green will give his usual farm update, and he will have a lot to cover after a very busy period.

Mr Green said: “I’ll be talking about how we coped over winter which lower silage stocks than usual. We’ve been fortunate the grass came in early this year, but we also worked hard to ration the silage over the winter months. I’ll also cover how lambing and calving has been going, as well as how things are looking on the cereals side, which is pretty good at the moment.”

The final part of the meeting will focus on the best methods for recycling plastic after the recent burning ban came into force. Mrs Stewart will discuss how farmers can organise for this waste to be either picked up on farm, or dropped off, as well as highlighting the costs involved.

“I think there are some farmers who are simply storing a lot of the waste on farm at the moment,” said Mrs Stewart, “but that just isn’t sustainable. You are not allowed to store it for more than two years and waiting too long will just make it harder to dispose of, it’s best that farmers start doing it sooner rather than later.”

Corskie Farm is one of nine monitor farms that have been established around Scotland in a joint initiative by Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) and AHDB Cereals & Oilseeds. The aim of the programme, which is funded by Scottish Government, is to help improve the productivity, profitability and sustainability of Scottish farm businesses.

The Monitor Farm meeting will take place on Corskie Farm, Garmouth, IV32 7NN, on Tuesday 7 May from 1.30pm – 4.30pm.  The event is free of charge but to assist with catering it would be appreciated if you can book a place by contacting Samantha Stewart by phone (01343 548787) or email (samantha.stewart@sac.co.uk).

For more information about the monitor farm programme visit www.monitorfarms.co.uk