Help is on the way!

A very belated post and not really in keeping with the time of year but I have just discovered these photographs on my phone and thought I would share them after a conversation with Caroline Drummond from LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) about the importance of providing habitat for beneficial insects.  In an ideal world it would be good to farm without insecticides; allowing mother nature to control the pests that predate our crops and impact on the quality of the food they produce or the yield.  Is there a way to enable larger numbers of these biological helpers to control the pests for us? Habitats such as grass margins, beetle banks and pollen and nectar strips have all shown to increase the numbers of beneficial insects that can help control the pests.

Work undertaken at the   Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust at Loddington show how a simple step, like creating a Beetle Bank in fields over 20 Ha (50 acres) have have a huge benefit to providing habitat of overwintering beneficial insects like spiders.  These guys are then able to migrate across the field and help protect the crop from invading pests like the black bean aphid or others.  But what about using biological help in a different form?  Could we spray fungi and bacteria onto our fields to help deter pests, disease and potentially weeds?  All things to be considered in the future which are currently being used in green houses and controlled environments but could they be used in the wider landscape? 

Beasts in the Barley

Just for the records I also found a whole lot of ladybirds and larvae in the Coors Malting Spring Barley this afternoon. Even though it was raining the larvae were hard at work searching for their supper. On the menu tonight (I think) were grain aphids. There were a few small populations, not enough to worry about spraying them, so the beneficials will be able to control them for the next couple of weeks prior to harvest.

Interestingly the malting barley has not received any type of insecticide at all through the growing season but the wild bird seed mixture has received 3! It just goes to show that correct applications, at the correct timing, of the correct products can control the nasty (damage causing) insects whilst allowing the good ones (beneficials) to thrive.

Ladybird Bonanza

I popped in and had a look at the wild bird food mixtures that we planted in April to see how they were progressing and what a surprise I had.

Many of the plants that were growing, this is fat hen, (actually a weed), but good feed value never-the-less are hosting the largest populations of mealy cabbage aphids I have seen in a long time.

Feeding on these aphids are many hundreds of ladybirds. Here is a ladybird in it's larvae stage fattening up on the aphids.

This shot is showing three adult ladybirds feeding on some black bean aphids on a Quinoa plant. There was also more hoverflies and other beneficials than I could count.

Many of the plants have seeded well and should provide the most fantastic source of seeds during the coming winter months.

In the fore ground of this picture is some fodder radish that has some very large seed pods that will hold their seed well into the winter providing a much later seed source.

Millbank Trials

The field photographed is hosting our trial areas for wild bird seeds as part of the impending HLS scheme. It was planted in April with a wide variety of plants aimed at producing wild bird feed through the winter. the mix included mustard, fodder radish, kale, linseed, sunflowers, millet and we added some spring barley just for good measure.

Despite the dry summer the crop got off to a great start, fending off most of the pigeons eyeing up the juicy seedlings, mainly the sunflowers and kale. The flee beetles and the pollen beetles also had a go but a timely insecticide brought them to a swift end. What has amazed me is the diverse insect life that is benefiting from the plants in flower. I walked into the crop this morning to find bumblebees, honey bees, butterflies, spiders, ladybirds, hoverflies and many other hungry beasties all feasting on the pollen. I was really pleased about this, an uncalculated but not unsurprising benefit.

We need more farmers to take up these options as part of Campaign for the Farmed Environment, it wasn't that expensive to establish, it might last two years, with the kale surviving, and the benefits to general farm biodiversity will be enormous.