Biofertiliser boosts pumpkin

be okay with a minimum tillage approach.”

That fits the philosophy of the farm, which is to minimise soil disturbance and reduce synthetic inputs as much as possible.

Instead of a plough and / or power harrow approach, a minimum disturbance strip-till subsoiler was used to create the seedbed into which 4000 pumpkin seeds were planted by hand on 1 June.

Each seed, except in four rows, was coated with a powdered biological seed dressing developed by Edwards Agricultural Supplies in conjunction with bionutrition company Biolevel.

Mycroboost contains a blend of microbes that help fix nitrogen from the air and solubilise phos- than an application of box muck prior to planting, no fertiliser was required.

“I had put aside one bag of fertiliser for the pumpkins, as they were a cash crop, but I never needed to use it as the plants grew so phenomenally well.”

Further diversification

The main challenge during the growing season was mildew, induced, he thinks, by irrigating with a rain gun mounted on a slurry tank, during the worst of the drought. A natural milde- wicide, bicarbonate of soda, was used to treat the mildew.

Pumpkin production from the patch compared well with more intensive pumpkin production in other parts of the country, Mr Cooke believes. “We had a bumper crop.”

That led to fruition of part two of the planned diversification – an event staged around Halloween featuring Ruby’s Alpaca business and where visitors picked their own pumpkin.

“It attracted a huge number of people via Instagram, as well as Facebook. People were coming from as far away as the Wirral and Birmingham. “

In total around 5000 visitors visited the Pumpkin and Alpaca events over a two-week period,

Clockwide from top left: Pumpkins have proved a useful diversification; grassland is good quality; cows were turned out in February there was still plenty of grass growing until the moisture ran out.”

No water or additional products were applied during the summer drought, he says, with grazing platform recovering well from September to grow a lot more grass meaning he didn’t need to house the cows until mid-November, helping to reduce some of his forage requirements over winter.

Crop nutrition

On land for silage more traditional fertiliser programmes were used, with slurry and calcium ammonium nitrate applied prior to first cut. “As it was so dry, we didn’t put anything on the aftermaths after either first or second cuts, but next year I plan to use BioN and Edwards Advanced Seaweed on them.”

That will help reduce his synthetic requirements further –something which he is also keen to do on the arable crops with ap-