Andy Meecham of St Giles Farms in Wimborne runs a 1,130-hectare arable farm predominately growing; winter wheat, winter and spring barley, winter oilseed rape (OSR), peas, naked oats, beans and cover crops.
Andy's farm is currently in mid-tier stewardship and the estate is very much involved in conservation work, including implementing butterfly strips and cover crop rotation.
He believes that growers need to play their part in adhering to the highest standards, while protecting the natural environment, alongside focusing on sustainability.
In this blog, we hear about Andy's grassweed challenges and how he's looking forward to being a part of the Isoflex® active Grower Group.
What are your biggest weed problems?
Blackgrass remains dominant in many areas across the country and has crept in slowly over the years on my farm.
It's something that we're dealing with on-farm and although we thought we were managing the weed quite well, this year we've been caught out with how big the issue truly is.
How big of an issue is blackgrass for you?
Blackgrass has become a big problem for the farm and with the weeds' ability to produce very large numbers of viable seeds on an annual basis, it won't be going away any time soon without help from herbicide control.
What is your standard programme for controlling blackgrass?
In response to our blackgrass problem, we've widened our rotation and grow competitive, fast growing wheat varieties, such as Champion.
By regularly monitoring my crops to identify patches of weeds early, it helps me act to control them through chemical applications or hand rouging.
We apply a robust herbicide programme including flufenacet, diflufenican and pendimethalin to help control the weed, and hand-rogue depending on labour availability.
When it comes to spray timings, we particularly focus on T1, T2 and T3. We don’t tend to do T0 timings as this is more dependable on our crop variety choice.
Andy will be trialling FMC's new Isoflex® active herbicide and is looking forward to seeing the results and how they can work with it on-farm.