How it works
Reducing or removing herbicides from the system offers the potential to significantly improve soil health and all the knock on benefits this could infer to crop health and resilience. There is also a scarcity of new chemistry available for such a minor crop and the potential losses of some of the main herbicides currently used.
Previous work on weed suppression from living mulches under blackcurrants identified that certain species were effective for weed suppression with minimal yield reductions of the cash crop.
The trials would test:
- Efficacy of weed suppression
- % ground cover of living mulch species (short and long term)
- Effect on blackcurrant crop yield and vigour
- Evaluation species / species mixes suitability
Trial design
It is proposed to carry out trials on 3 sites.
Trials will focus on living mulches both pre-planting and in young established plantations.
Trials would have an untreated control, standard herbicide management, 2-3 main species) of living mulch. All treatments will be replicated twice. Plot length will be approximately 100m.
In addition to the main living mulch species two of the growers (site 1 and 2) are keen to experiment with a woodchip and a cardboard/woodchip mulch as additional treatments, following on from the ‘Alternatives to plastic mulch’ field lab (https://www.innovativefarmers.org/field-lab?id=3fcc0fc7-ce4c-ea11-817e-005056ad0bd4)
