Ed and his brother, Charles, took over their parents’ 600ha farm in Essex nearly fifteen years ago and have recently taken on a further 500ha farm in Bedfordshire.
The original acreage, Childerditch Farm, sits predominately on heavy London clay, is zero till and has a rotation that includes winter wheat, winter beans, spring barley, linseed, and oats.
Ed studied at Harper Adams University and was the former Chairperson of the National Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs.
When Ed took over, black-grass was rife on the farm and it’s been his mission to bring populations back under control. Ed takes a zero-tolerance approach to grass weeds and is well known for stopping the car, tractor or sprayer, to pull individual plants.
Cultural controls have been key to Ed’s success and that includes spring cropping. Ed also delays drilling and uses stale seedbeds but finds that crop competition is equally important. With heavy soils, he has to find a balance and sometimes that means bringing the drilling date forward to ensure the wheat gets off to a good start.
This year, Ed’s growing 350ha of wheat and is focusing on the milling varieties, Skyfall and Crusoe. All the wheat receives a robust pre-emergence herbicide stack, followed by an early post-emergence treatment.
In early summer, Ed deploys the final weed control tactic - hand-rogueing. It’s an important part of that zero-tolerance approach; removing any survivors to prevent seed return. He’s also not afraid to spray off patches or whole fields when needed.
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“The first of our winter wheat was drilled on the 25th September and last field was sown on the 11th October,” recalls Ed.
All of the first wheat were treated with Luximo®, topped up at peri-emergence with flufenacet, diflufenican and prosulfocarb. “Luximo performed well. These are our cleanest crops and demonstrated the value of the product, especially when combined with peri-emergence treatments.”
The second and continuous wheats had Crystal®, Hurricane®, diflufenican and Avadex.
With mild and wet conditions over the winter, the grassweeds didn’t stop growing, leaving Ed with some large plants to tackle come spring.
“Annoyingly, the continued wet weather meant we couldn’t get on quick enough with the Atlantis WG,” he says. “The farm is the dirtiest it’s been in ten years. It’s not been a good year for anyone.”
Today 90% of the winter wheat acreage has been hand-rogued and no longer harbours any black-grass. Just 5ha were un-rogueable and any of that acreage destined for another wheat crop has been sprayed off.
“For the first-time ever we’ve had to pull rye-grass,” says Ed. “Up until now, we’ve managed to keep it on the headlands and while it’s not much – 15 plants in a 16ha field – it’s frustrating.”
Next year, according to Ed, it’s going to be going to be challenging because of the levels of seed return.
“We will be using more Luximo this autumn. With ryegrass coming into the fields now, we’ve got to.”
Ed will be growing fewer second wheats and is also considering splitting fields. “I hate doing it, but I know it’ll be worthwhile,” he says.
The recent hire of an 8m rake reflects a change to Ed’s autumn cultivations. “Though we hired it to deal with an accumulation of straw, rather than grassweed control, it should help the breakdown of trash which will inevitably help improve pre-em performance. Everything now will be raked twice, once soon after the combine and again six weeks later.
“I’d like to think this year was a one-off but I wouldn’t like to bet on it.”
