I wasn’t happy with my silage yields last year – even my contractor passed a comment that I should have had more bulk. I think my cheap approach to fertiliser is possibly the root of the problem – I usually just buy straight nitrogen to top-up the slurry and manure.

Soil Testing

Elaine Jewkes and Ross Leadbeater from Growhow have been talking to me about taking a more planned approach, and this is going to start with some soil testing. I already do this a bit, but usually only when I’m about to reseed a field.

They also advised that I should be sampling a quarter of the fields on the farm each year, rotating round to eventually build up a full farm picture, and making improvements to correct the soil indices each year. Sounds logical!